Shelf Life

For years I have struggled with storage of baking tins. I have put them in heaps – but they don’t nest properly, and they fall over, I have stored them in plastic boxes – but they won’t pack efficiently. Others have this problem too – lots of pictures like this on the Net.

I don’t have neat sets of tins that will go into one tidy stack like this – mine are random rectangles, squares and circles, some flat, some with rims – and don’t even mention the Bundt/tube pans which have a hole up the middle! And as for my loose bottomed tarts…

The Blessed St Delia sets great store by using exactly the right sized tin, or her recipe will not work. But by the time I have dug all the tins out of the cupboard and sorted through for the correct one, the urge to bake has often left me. Or I use a tin which is approximately right, and wonder why the cake comes out flat – or bubbles over the top as it cooks. I have finally sorted myself out. It cost me £5 but I am pleased with the result. I bought one of these in IKEA

It is a Variera pot lid organiser, and expands from 8.5cm to 50cm. I have been able to stack my baking sheets, cake tins, cupcake pans etc vertically, with no more than four in each division. It looks so tidy – and now I never have to take out more than 4 to get to the one I need,. My loaf tins do nest, so they are stacked at the end

Because the rectangular pans are all ordered now, that has freed up the shelf above and I have 4 neat nests of round tins there. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before [other bakeware organisers are available – like this one] Last week I needed my square brownie pan – and found it almost instantly, inside the slightly larger grey silicon square pan. Everything is so much more efficient. What I can’t work out is how I came to possess quite so many tins. I know I purchased some of them [my pair of long narrow rectangular loose bottomed tins] but others seem to have mysteriously appeared over the years! I must ask Liz and Steph if they need any of them  – better to pass on my spares now, rather than bequeath them in my will!!