Buenas Reader,

You’ve seen the unmolding cake videos with perfectly shaped food coming out of the super flexible, rubbery silicone molds. I know you want them and are curious; I was too, until I bought my first set.

Don’t get me wrong, I love any tool that will make my baking/cooking easier to use and clean, especially if it's going to make the final product look pretty. I also keep seeing people making amazing desserts in these elaborate molds, which are quite impressive, and I, too, wanted to do the same.

When it came down to updating my Tembleque de Coco post, I bought the Nordic Ware Micro Mini Bundt Set. I wanted single serving sizes instead of a larger display. These are microwave molds, not silicone and not what I thought, but they were able to give me the desired look I wanted.

It wasn't until I wanted to test my flancocho recipe when I bought the Tongjude 72-Piece Silicone Bakeware Set. I was so excited, and I could not wait to use them. What I was not prepared for was the learning curve. And that is what I want to share with you today. Three things no one talks about when using silicone molds.

1. Flexibility: Boy, are these flexible! They tuck and roll into themselves like no other. But there is such a thing as too much flexibility. Flexi Pans by SilPans are the molds used in many professional kitchens, and they are stiff and retain their shape. However, these cheaper molds do need a bit of extra support. I remember the first time I tested flancocho. The mess I made from the counter to the oven was disastrous. 🫣 As soon as I grabbed the bundt mold, the center caved in, and the mold turned into a funnel, spilling custard and cake batter all over the place. So when you work with a mold, think ahead. In the case of the flancocho, I kept it in the pan I was going to use for the bain-marie (bańo de Maria) and transferred the entire thing to the oven instead. Another example of unstable flexibility is my muffin pan. Without a baking sheet, the pan will not sit flat on the oven racks. I ended up with batter spilling into a hot oven. 🥴 The baking sheet also helps transfer constant heat to the mold as it bakes, which leads me to the next point.
2. Heat Transfer: Still on the same flancocho, I noticed the cake wasn't quite setting up, and it baked much longer than the recipe called for. After a while, I ended up with a dry, uneven cake. Why? Because silicone is not a good conductor of heat. To top it off, the mold is surrounded by water, which is also a poor conductor of heat, but crucial to custard baking. The best conductor for heat is metal, hands down, so these and any other silicone pads and molds, including the Silpans, still require a little extra metal support. Remember, this is the reason silicone is also used to cover utensils, pot handles, and trivets: it can absorb heat without transferring it to your hands. The solution is always to support your silicone mold with a metal pan, no exceptions.
3. Unmolding: Unmolding is the selling point of silicone molds. The videos are not lying; food does pop out easily and cleanly. However, most of the time, it depends on what you are placing in these molds. Take, for example, my Pistachio Tembleque; the custard was dense and silky, plus the combination of cornstarch, pistachio and coconut fat allowed it to set quite well. The solution to flawless unmolding starts with the recipe; for items like tembleque, custards, and gelatins, your ratios — liquid to starch, or gelatin to water — have to be on point for the final product to congeal properly. Cakes have come out well, but even in my flancocho recipe, some of the pretty peaks were lost during unmolding. In this case, I think the culprit was the caramel. The caramel solidified at the peaks of the mold, and with poor heat conduction, it never melted enough for the custard to replace it and set.

Now this list is starting to sound like three reasons why not to get the molds. 🤣 Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with my mold set. They are much easier to store and clean, and lighter than if I had all 72 pieces in a metal set. After all, I still do not have cabinets in my kitchen, so space is at a premium. But I am sharing this information because, as much as we see videos of pretty cake reveals, they do not tell us that using silicone molds has a learning curve. The assumption is that they work just like a regular metal pan – they do not.

Sometimes, we purchase a tool, not knowing exactly how to use it, find it frustrating to get it to work properly, then give up and let it collect dust in our cabinets. That is why I like to share these emails, to find common ground and to share the good and sometimes bad of a tool.

Do you have any silicone molds/pans? Have you encountered the same type of issues as I have described? Do you know of another trick I did not mention? Let me know!

Hasta entonces!

Zoé

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