Red Kettle Award

The Red Kettle Award is a segment where I award a product for its versatility or simply because it makes me say, "I wish everyone had one of these", or "I wish I had two of these".

Today's Red Kettle recipient is the Kitchen Aid Silicone Baking Mat which was recommended to me by a good friend. Now that I have been using one for quite some time, I can see why. The one that I own is 11" x 16.625". My mat and pan do not match up exactly, but guess what, it doesn't matter. The mat is so versatile. It eliminates cooking spray which by the way will probably be a future Red Kettle recipient. It also eliminates parchment paper. Cookies go in, come out, and it's ready to use for the next batch. The mat is also useful for rolling dough. Its reusable nature is fabulous on so many levels. Have you ever gone to bake something and reached for your ever faithful parchment paper, and it's not there? Perhaps you forgot to replace the last roll after you finished some delicious masterpiece and you were so delirious with joy over that recipe you didn't write parchment on the list. Well, I have, but no more.

So hats off to the "mat"! Readers if you have a mat, please feel free to comment on it.