Why stick to cupcake pans?!

So I was thinking...why do all cupcakes fundamentally look exactly the same? All round with a flat bottom and some kind of delicious spectacle on top...

What if you could make them look a lil' different?

So out came my brioche pan!

Admittedly, I've never actually baked brioche in it, I just thought the shapes were pretty...which is always a good excuse to buy baking equipment.

And I thought to myself dear friends! Surely if you can bake brioche in it, baking cakes in it isn't such a crazy idea...

So I did.

It were rather simple really, just greased it up and plopped about 4 tsp of mixture in. But as you can see my cakes got a little cooking happy and blew up over the edges, so maybe just 2-3 tsp next time...

And they look so sweet! Perfect to be served individually on a plate with a lil' bit of frosting swirled on top (mine were eaten by my trusty 'cake tester' aka The Dad before I could frost them...but the idea was there!)

I also tried out a multi-layered one for visual effect although it is a little in the chocolate's favour...but is that a bad thing?!

The grooves were begging to have lemon icing poured down them...

And then a little more icing...

OK a lot more...

And then! I figured, why stop at cake? Why not attempt making a cheesecake in it...

So behold the, 'What is that?!'...

...'Ooooh it's a cheesecake!'

Serving it upside down is of course optional, but I can't resist producing things in front of people and having them look at it quizzically, only to flip it up the right way and have them sigh with relief that it is indeed edible. Life would be boring if we always served food the right way up...

Lovely little individual cheesecakes!


And I guess you could do jellies...I did another mousse but again, eaten before photographed.
Eeerm what else...ice cream! Ooor massive ice cubes, ooor...well anything you can think of!

So basically, don't use a baking pan for the purpose the label tells you to, there's all kind of stuff you can do with pans to make weirdly shaped and unusual things. Why just the other week I baked a cake in a pint glass...so get creative with the stuff in your kitchen! (With the things that are oven proof of course or things could get a lil' messy...)