BEST PANS EVER!!! SOOOO worth the money!!!
I recieved and have been using my new Rachael Ray 10-piece Cucina bakeware for about a month now and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them so far!!! They arrived very quickly, were packaged neatly, arrived scratch free, and are a beautiful color. The metal is very thick - much more sturdy than any other pans/cookie sheets I have ever owned. I love that all of the pans have a good size handle area on both sides - I used to hate picking up my cake pan or muffin tins and having the thumb of my oven mitt smoosh into the food when I was trying to remove it from a hot oven. The handles are a perfect size to pick up with my gloved hand. I have also noticed the red silicone parts are thick enough that it helps keep the pans from scratching each other when they are stored (I don't know if that is their purpose or not, but they work).I decided to write this review now because I accidently tested out the non-stick surface last night. I made a spiral glazed ham for the first time ever. I wrapped the ham in foil as it said to do on the package, however I was afraid the juices would leak all over my oven, and I would have trouble lifting an odd shaped, really hot ham. I decided to put one of the cookie sheets under the foil wrapped ham. I baked it for a little over 2 hours, removed it, opened the foil, poured on the sticky glaze, re-wrapped it as best as I could, and popped it back in the oven. As the ham finished cooking, the glaze got WAY more sticky, and leaked out of the foil, all over the cookie pan, bubbled up, and literally burnt onto the surface. {I wish I had taken a picture of it to show how terrible it looked} I thought to myself "Oh crap, I just totally ruined my brand new, kind of expensive pan". After removing the delicious ham, I debated on whether I was going to try to clean the pan, or just mark it up as a loss and throw it away. I ran hot water over it just to see if there was any hope, and to my literal amazement, the burnt goo began falling off and rinsing out! There were a couple of spots that the water didn't seem to work on, so I put a couple of drops of Dawn in the pan, filled it with hot water, and let it sit overnight. I just rinsed the pan with more hot water, and before I even touched it with the sponge, the rest of the burnt goo fell out!! The pan looks brand new, like it had never gone through such a horrible ordeal :-) I have never had a pan that came clean without severe scrubbing, scraping, soaking, and more scrubbing. This one literally rinsed clean without me even touching it with a sponge (I of course did wipe a soft soapy sponge over it to ensure it was thoroughly clean, but I probably didn't have to)BEST PANS EVER!!! SOOOO worth the money!!! These are a definite investment, but seem like they will last me for years to come. I can't wait to buy the stove-top pots and other items to match!!