I’m all about the easy in my house, especially when it comes to my life in the kitchen. As much as I love to cook and bake, that doesn’t mean that I want to or enjoy spending hours longer in the kitchen slaving over a dish than what I have to. I have other things I want to do, too, like read or practice Spanish or run to the gym even. That’s where Life Hacks are my friend.
And this? This is one of the more genius moves.
When I make muffins of cupcakes or cookies or pretty much anything with a batter that I want to divide into even size pieces – which means meatballs when I’m being fancy – I use my cookie scoops. Every household should have them. Personally, I have them in three sizes. I have the tiny ones for truffles, medium size for cookies and meatballs and the like, and the big ones for muffins and cupcakes. Especially when baking, it’s important to have your items the same size so the don’t burn, and these make it so much easier.
When I’m scooping batter, my scoop becomes a mess. The batter sticks to it, it doesn’t come out evenly, and I’m not as exact in my measurements as I may want. Or… that used to be the case. Now I have the perfect Life Hack that makes this not just easy but no mess, too. All you need is some nontick cooking spray, your muffin tin, and your scoop.
Over your sink (to catch the mess of the overspray) lightly mist your scoop with the nonstick spray. I was startled by my cat when doing this one, so you can see that I have more in here than I need, but it’s ok. Shhh, I just let it drip out a bit.
Step 2? Scoop out your batter just as you normally would and release each dollop into your awaiting tin. Notice how not just the first one comes out beautifully but ever single one does. The nonstick coating remains on your scoop through the whole process. Even after scooping all my thick brownie cupcakes, the scoop only had a little bit of batter on the very edge.
Now? I know I’m scooping even amounts and my brownie cupcakes will turn out evenly, lessening the likelihood that one child or another will argue over who has the bigger cupcake tomorrow. Super easy, super simple, and – I think – super genius!
This is SUCH a genius idea!!!!
Thanks! It makes my life easier for sure 🙂
This is such a cool tip. I hate trying to get everything out of my scooper. Does it work for other types of measuring things, too?
Absolutely – spray the inside of your liquid measuring cup if you’re doing honey or something similar. I do it all the time 🙂
Please explain why the cupcake papers are needed if the pan is sprayed with oil. Thanks.
This article doesn’t address cupcake papers but talks about the scooper being sprayed. That said, you will not ever need cupcake papers if the pan is sprayed with oil. That said, I almost universally go with cupcake papers v spraying the pan, as the makes for a better texture for your baked goods and more importantly (to me), you don’t get the nasty sticky baked on oil that is impossible to get off your pan in the places where you don’t have the batter. I hope that helps!
I was using non-stick spray on my scoop for cookie dough, however, it was sticking anyway. I could not find any other suggestions but the spray. Do you have any other suggestions for me ?
Cookie dough is tough because it’s so much more dense than batter, so it wipes off the spray. My best suggestion for cookies is to buy a high quality spring loaded cookie scoop so that the little metal “wing” scrapes as closely as possible to the bowl of the scoop to have as little stick to the scoop as possible, but inevitably, you will have some cookie dough stick to a scoop over time no matter what you do. A good quality scoop should at least ensure that your cookies release each time and retain their shape. Good luck!