Lakeland Loaf Tin Liners

Rather than making a circular cake which has to be cut into wedges I prefer to make cakes in a loaf tin. It's easier to cut exactly as much as you want and a slice fits neatly into a lunch box. There's always a loaf on the go in our house and I keep a few in the freezer - they stack like bricks and defrost quickly in an emergency. I can mix up the ingredients in less than five minutes, but it used to take me a lot longer than that just to line the loaf tin with baking parchment. It caused a lot of bad language, I always managed to waste some paper and sometimes I didn't bake a cake simply because of the time and bother of lining the tin.

Then I discovered Lakeland's Loaf Tin Liners.

They come, forty at a time, in a see-through plastic container which keeps them perfectly in shape. I can't recycle it, or use it for anything else and normally I would object to this, but a pack of liners lasts me about nine months and the container means that the last liner out of the pack will be in the same condition as the first. It keeps them dry and means that you don't need to be quite as careful about where you store them as you needed to be when they were packed in a cardboard box.

There are four different sizes of liner. Lakeland stress that you should measure your loaf tin before buying/ordering. When you see them in the shop it is very easy to guess and buy the wrong size. I know - I've done it. You should be able to find a liner to fit your loaf tin, and I've listed the sizes under "quick facts" at the end of the review for easy reference. Each size of liner is made to the same design - it's a flat piece of paper that's been pressed into shape, so the corners are pleated to take up the excess paper.

Using them really couldn't be simpler. Take one liner and drop it into your loaf tin. Pour cake mixture into liner. Bake cake. When the cake comes out of the oven you can remove the liner from the cake or not, as you wish. It does peel away from the cake very easily - unlike when we had to use greaseproof paper and it had to be torn away in little strips. The liners withstand temperatures up to 230°C - which is far hotter than the temperature required in any cake recipe I've ever seen.

Are they value for money? Disregarding the convenience aspect altogether and looking only at the price, each liner costs about twice as much as the same paper bought on a roll. That's buying the £6.45 economy roll though and not everyone wants to tie that amount of money tied up in baking parchment. Depending on which size you buy, the liner adds 8p to 10p to the cost of a cake. Lakeland says that these liners can be wiped and reused, but I've never been tempted to do that - I couldn't be certain that they were clean!

There are benefits other than convenience though. Whenever I made my own lining I always had some leakage of the cake mixture through to the tin. One of the cakes that I make is gingerbread with a high sugar content and this mixture stuck to the tin like superglue. I frequently had to soak the tin and sometimes even to attack it with a knife. This didn't do tin, knife or fingers any good. With the liner I've never had any leakage.

Tins stay in better condition. They certainly never need to see the inside of a dishwasher and frequently all they want (or get!) is a wipe with a damp cloth. I used to have to replace my tins every few years. The tins I'm using now have been in use for over a decade and are still looking good.

I find that loaves stored in the liner don't dry out as quickly and if the cake is of a crumbly texture it does give some support. This can be particularly useful if you're making a cake to take somewhere. Sometimes I make cakes for the local Bring and Buy sales and I find that cakes in liners always sell best.

Paradoxically it's this last point which can also be the liner's only disadvantage apart from cost. One of the cakes I make is a carrot cake, which has a fine texture and a pale appearance. The lines where the paper is pleated at the corners are noticeable on the cake and this makes some people think that it's a bought cake rather than homemade.

Mind you, if it wasn't for the convenience of the liners I might not eat so much cake and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing!

Quick facts:

1lb Loaf Tin liner: 6½"L x 3"W x 2½" H (16.5 x 8 x 6.5cm) Ref 5552 £3.55
2lb Loaf Tin Liner: 7½" x 3½" x 2½" (19 x 9 x 6.5cm) Ref 5553 £3.95
1lb Loaf Tin Liner: 5" x 3" x 3" (13 x 7.5 x 7.5cm) Ref 6545 £3.20
2lb Loaf Tin Liner: 6" x 3½" x 3¼" (15.5 x 9 x 8cm) Ref 7321 £3.50