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Have you ever done something amazing but somehow the most basic part of the task felt the hardest? Like you ran a marathon but you really struggled to tie your shoes? Or you baked some amazing bars or a cake but you really struggled to line the pan with parchment paper? That used to be me. Well, the parchment paper one. I can tie my shoes and I most certainly cannot run a marathon. Or a mile, if we’re being honest.
ANYWAY I used to always fight with the parchment and I could never get it to stay in the pan. I would try to use cooking spray to get it to stick but I couldn’t even get the parchment paper to stay in the pan long enough to spray it. I would bake something really incredible like Chess Bars but what felt like it should be the most basic part of baking was really tripping me up. So I devised The Easiest Way to line a square pan with parchment paper.
Step 1: Get a sheet of parchment paper
Make sure you have enough parchment paper to cover your square pan. If you use pre-measured sheets of parchment paper just go ahead and grab one, but if you’re using a roll of parchment paper measure a sheet long enough to cover the entire top of the 8×8 pan.
Step 2: Push the sheet into the corners of the pan
Center the sheet of parchment paper over the pan and push down into all four corners. Really get in there with your fingers to try to make a crease or wrinkle at each corner.
Bonus step: Imagine how much more difficult your life would be if this is how you were trying to line the pan! This is what I did for years and I would basically avoid baking things in square pans because of how frustrating it would be.
Step 3: Fold along corner markings
When you take your parchment paper out of the pan, there should be little wrinkles where you pressed into each corner. Pretend there’s a line connecting the two creases on each side, and fold along the imaginary line. Repeat on each side.
Step 4: Cut out the corners
Once you’ve folded along each side of the parchment paper, you’ll have created this little squares in the corners. Using your fold lines to guide you, cut out each of these squares. It will look like this when you’re done:
Step 5: Line your square pan with no stress!
Once you’ve cut out all the corners, your parchment paper will pop right in to perfectly line your pan!
This may seem like a lot of effort to line a pan, but I promise it’s less than the time you would spend just cursing at your parchment paper if you tried to do it the other way. This will take you 3 minutes tops and there will be no swearing involved!