Do I need to line a pan with heavy brown paper and grease it when making old school fruitcake? Or can I just grease pans it really well?

Monita is a recipe tester for Food52.

added 6 months ago

Sounds like a substitute for parchment paper. If you can, I'd use parchment paper instead of just greasing the bottom of the pan

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ChefOno added 6 months ago

Before parchment became widely available, people used brown paper grocery bags, writing and other non-food safe papers. From the USDA:

Do not use brown paper bags from the grocery or other stores for cooking. They are not sanitary, may cause a fire, and may emit toxic fumes...The ink, glue, and recycled materials in paper bags may emit toxic fumes when they are exposed to heat.

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Thanks! The reason I wasn't going right to parchment was the "heavy" brown paper, that threw me off. The batter is so thick and heavy, thought it might break the parchment.

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bigpan added 6 months ago

I use parchment paper "with" butter for the extra flavor - and none of the cake sticks to the pan. Don't trust so-called non-grease pans.

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The reason for the 'heavy' brown paper was because of long cooking, the rich fruit cake would brown too much on the outside and some of the fruit would burn if you didn't line the tin . Double parchment insulates ut

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