Oops, I Did It Again: Cheesy Potato Gratin Stacks

I still had some cream left so I decided to make another attempt at those wonderful cheesy potato gratin stacks. The last time was my best effort so far. 

However, the last time I made it, my crunchy stuff stuck fast to the muffin tin, and I had trouble getting it out. Clean-up was a real chore. Worse yet, we lost a bunch of the really good crispy brown stuff that we adore.

So this time, I tried something new: I used silicone cupcake liners on half of the potato stacks. You may see the red, yellow, and blue liners in the tin. The potato stack that is being scooped out with a spoon in the photo is one baked without the silicone liner. Look at all that crispy stuff!

My findings: the cupcake liners helped keep things tidy, and they were very pretty and colorful and delightful in their own way, but those stacks did not get very crispy at all! Clean-up was easier on those parts of the tin, however.

Overall advice: skip the liners and just take the time, shortly after they come out of the oven, to run a sharp knife and then a big spoon around and under the edges of each one, to loosen them up and make it possible to remove the stacks without too much loss of crispy stuff.

Note: I had never used silicone liners before (I inherited these from big sister Barb) and so I looked it up. They should be safe up to around 428 degrees F. This recipe is baked at 350, so I figured we were good to go, and they were fine.

Our soundtrack song is Britney Spears, with Oops! . . . I Did It Again.