A Tale of Two Cupcake Pans...

I am not sure what it says about me that this is what I find interesting these days, but oh well, I am okay with it.

I baked some cupcakes to bring with us to my brother and sister-in-law's house today. Nothing overly ambitious, and I didn't even frost them (I thought that would be fun to do with little miss and the other little girl who would be there, too). So this isn't even a post about the actual cupcakes...

Instead, I am really just talking about the pans. There was enough batter for 24 cupcakes, and each cupcake pan I have makes 12 cupcakes. These are the two pans:









(this is an after-shot of them, in case you were curious...)

Anyway, as you can see, one is dark, the other light. Light and dark pans cook differently. Most recipes actually tell you that, if you are using a dark pan, you should lower your oven temperature by 25 degrees. I had a few options. I could bake one pan, change oven temp, then bake the second pan. Or I could bake one pan, clean it, and re-use it for the other half of the batter. I was too lazy for either of these options and chose, instead, to just bake them both at the same time. Halfway through the baking time I rotated the pans and switched which oven rack they were on, so each one got equal heat distribution.

Here is how they turned out:









They are on the cooling rack the way the pans are laid out in the picture above. You can actually tell the difference between the ones cooked in each pan! Huh!

Okay, so maybe you won't find it as interesting as I did... And I should probably use just one of the pans next time...

But in case you were wondering, both sets of cupcakes tasted delicious. And you couldn't tell the difference once they were smothered with chocolate frosting.