~ Karen vs. The Baking Sheet ~

We had a little incident in our house recently.  And by “incident” I mean my nice normal baking sheet went from looking normal and shiny and clean to looking like this

Turns out, it’s a bad idea to spray non-stick cooking spray all over a baking sheet and then bake it.  And this was after a couple attempts at scrubbing it clean with dish soap and water!

What happened was Dane was making one of those chicken filets that you buy from Costco in the frozen section and the instructions tell you to spray your baking sheet with non-stick spray…so, he did.  I think that one spot that is still clean is where the chicken filet was.  I’m not throwing him under the bus or anything, but….oh wait, yes I am. 😉

This may come as a shock to you, but I only have one baking sheet in my house.  And this kind is the air-bake style that does not come cheap.  I wasn’t about to give up on this guy just yet.  That’s when I remembered seeing something on Pinterest that talked about using baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to clean cookie sheets (here’s a link to her blog post).  That reminded me of a carpet cleaner I had once used that consisted of baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, and vinegar.  Anyway, I figured I’d give these three a try and see what happened.

I started by mixing a small amount of each in a plastic container.

And then I started by using a scrub brush to apply it.

Then I switched to the scrubby side of my dish sponge.  I had to really scrub to see any results.

After about 30 minutes of hard labor, I had come this far…

Yeah…I wasn’t that impressed either.  This was not going to be easy, but it was getting clean…there was a sliver of hope on the horizon!  It was at this point when I took a break.  After a quick recharge, I came back to it.  I decided to throw some white vinegar in the mix just to see what would happen.  And, it’s always fun to conduct a little science experiment.  It took me back to the days of fake erupting volcanoes at school science fairs. 😉

Oooohhh….ahhhh….

It seemed like the vinegar may have added a little more cleaning power, but I was still not too happy with the results.  That’s when Dane suggested I use a Brillo pad.  Luckily, we had one left under the sink.  I’m not a huge fan of brillo pads because I feel like I always get little shards of metal in my fingers even if I use gloves.  At this point, I felt like I would try anything to get this bad boy clean.  I am nothing if not determined.  I started using the brillo pad, but realized that I was creating all kinds of swirly designs, which I wasn’t too excited about.  Although, it did seem to get a lot of the worst parts off…along with using a lot of elbow grease.  You can see the swirlyness if you look closely towards the bottom of the sheet.

But, I will say, I was making progress!

My methods of mixing the cleaning solution changed as the night wore on…  I started just dumping a little bit of this and a little bit of that and would switch up my scrub brush every once in a while.  Dane even jumped in to help, which was nice since my right thumb was getting a little sore. 😉

Finally, after probably 2 hours of scrubbing…my baking pan was back and better than ever!  Karen: 1, baking pan: 0.  Victory!

I ended up having to use the steel wool a lot at the end to get the hardest stuff.  And now my baking sheet is restored to working order.  Which means I see some chocolate chip cookies in my near future. 😉

And everyone loves a dramatic before and after, right?

Just imagine me waving my arms in the air and pretending that a crowd is cheering for me.  Ya, that’s pretty much how I felt about getting this sucker clean.

So, if you have some bake ware that you thought was long past its prime…fear not, there is hope!  And, in case you were wondering, we now have a strict foil usage rule in our house when it comes to non-stick spray. 😉

Anyone else have some awesome cleaning tips for baking sheets?  Did anyone else see that pin on Pinterest and think that baking soda and hydrogen peroxide was going to change their life only to realize it wasn’t quite so simple?