An invaluable piece of kitchen ware, but you have to know its quirks!
I bought my first AirBake cookie sheet almost 20 years ago, as soon as I heard about them. I had been trying for years to get consistent quality cookies using old fashioned baking sheets in an even older, uneven-heating oven (in a NYC apartment. Needless to say, there were a lot of 'factory seconds' that my roommates got to polish off. The most persistent problems was cookies that got really dark on the bottom before the top was cooked -- changing the oven temp up or down didn't improve the results; just made them happen quicker or more slowly.
Enter the AirBake pan. It took quite a bit of experimentation with baking temp to get optimum results (setting the oven 25 degrees higher than specified in the recipe works best for me), but ultimately the results were fantastic. The really great thing about these pans is the way they distribute heat evenly -- even if your oven has hot and cold zones. And no more black bottoms!
My first edition AirBake pans finally started...
AirBake is good for some purposes
My experience with AirBake cookie sheets is that they are good for some purposes -- slow-baking still-frozen chocolate chip cookie dough (*See note at end), for one example. With some other kinds of cookies, however, the tops tend to dry out before the cookie is completely cooked.
The AirBake pan's even heat distribution can be approximated by putting an empty (old, cheap) cookie sheet on the bottom rack (lowest position) in your oven as a combination drip-catcher and heat-distributor to "shield" your regular cookie sheet (which you'll put, as usual, on the center rack). If you have an unreliable oven, you may find that this is enough to even out the heat distribution without having to resort to the AirBake pans, and you'll have a leg up on cleaning the oven if anything spills.
While I generally dislike nonstick surfaces, I find that my AirBake pan is particularly bad at releasing sugar cookies, and I recommend that you put down a layer of parchment paper if you're baking...
Perfect bake
This is a great product. Bakes evenly, uniform browning. Easy to clean. I'm going to buy more of this bake ware. I've had it for years and am very pleased with the results.
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