GOOP: A Baking Wonder Product That Has Nothing To Do With Gwyneth Paltrow!

You know how when you’ve baked something (cakes, muffins, whatevs), it’s sometimes hard to get the baked good out of the pan? Ever had a half-torn cakewreck as a result? (Not talking from experience. Nope. Nuh-uh. Incidentally, buttercream is my best friend and patches everything up!) Some people use cake-release spray. Some people use Pam. I’ve always used just plain butter to grease my cake pans, and then followed that by dusting flour on top of the buttered pan (or cocoa if it a chocolate cake). Never had an issue, and why pay for a processed product when I knew flour and butter worked just fine?

But! What is there was a mixture that you could use to turn those two steps (butter pan, dust flour on pan) into one step?

Your dreams have been answered! GOOP has arrived!!! (I’m pretty sure this is NOT what Gwyneth Paltrow had in mind when she named her blog, but so sad, too bad, I shall forever think of lovely buttery cake ingredients when I hear her blog name. (Subversion by food. I like it!)

But what is this GOOP stuff you so lovingly capitalize, you ask?

It’s a mixture of flour, shortening, and oil.

In other words, you’re basically premixing your butter (i.e. solid fat) and flour that you normally would prep the pan with, adding some oil to make it a bit more loose and spreadable (and I’m sure there’s something to be said for the different heating properties of shortening and oil, but eh, I’m writing this post and 4 am in the morning – thank you, insomnia – and don’t really want to dive down a wormhole of googling the properties of different fats. So. Two fats. They work well together. End of bracket).

Now let’s get down to brass tacks! Or quantities, rather.

The original recipe called for equal amounts of flour, oil, and shortening. But whenever do I stick to a recipe? *laughs so hard has to wipe tears from eyes*

So. Modifications are the name of the game. I decided to increase the amount of oil. Just baker’s instinct. I could delve down into why my instincts say that but again, it’s 4 am, so whatevs, I’m going with the flow. Now, let’s get making up some GOOP!

GOOP

(slightly adapted from iambaker.net’s recipe)

• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/3 c. oil
• 1/2 c. shortening

Mix together, until uniformly blended. To use, apply to cake tins with a pastry brush. Let cakes cool in pans 10 minutes before inverting to release cake. Enjoy your non-stick cake!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As regular blog readers will have gathered, as much as I love vanilla, I’m all about opportunities for chocolate to shine. As such, here is my own humble recipe for CHOCOLATE GOOP! This is better to use instead of regular GOOP when you’re baking a chocolate cake — ESPECIALLY if you’re baking a naked chocolate cake. You don’t want unsightly white GOOP residue messing up your lusciously cocoa-coloured cake sides! No, use my CHOCOLATE GOOP and save that cake!

CHOCOLATE GOOP

(slightly less adapted from iambaker.net’s recipe)

• 1/4 c. cocoa powder
• 1/4 c. flour
• 1/3 c. oil
• 1/2 c. shortening

Mix all ingredients together until fully blended. To use, apply to cake tins with a pastry brush. Let cakes cool in pans 10 minutes before inverting them to release cake. Enjoy your non-stick cake!

Next Post: I finally found some food markers (think Crayola, but food-safe) so I’m going to show you all the basics steps to make fancy-pants cookies! I’ll even include a hack to get the glossy, shiny professional icing! Stay tuned, as it’s a-gonna be fun! And tasty. Tasty really is the most important, don’t you think?

And then after that, perhaps I will finally get to posting about Apple Cinnamon Buttermilk Pancakes and the Birth of a Recipe! Because that recipe is super-tasty too!

Linking Up at Meal Plan Monday! And at Full Plate Thursday!