Restore Your Cookie Sheets

We've all come accross the Miracle Pin the claims to restore your cookie sheets to their original state, and after staring at it for as long as I've been a Pinterest member it was time to give that Miracle Cleaner a try!

Before After

 

Over at One Good Thing by Jillee, Jillee gives a recipe for her 'Miracle Cleaner' of 1/4c. Baking Soda, then squirting in enough *fresh* Hydrogen Peroxide to make a paste, then by applying it with your fingers. I was all in, could something so simple really do such a great job?

I mixed up the paste as directed and applied with a Scotch Brite rather than my fingers (my long nails often get in the way), after letting it sit for 30 minutes I washed off the mixtures giving it a little elbow grease and to my amazement....NOTHING.... they looked just as stained as before - now I was on a quest for what would actually clean these pans.

I decided to give the same concauction a try that did so well cleaning my oven a few days ago; once again I mixed up the paste and applied with a Scotch Brite; after letting it sit for another 30 minutes I washed the pans off, and using the same amount of elbow grease I was able to scrub off quite a bit of the grime.

Before After

After reading the comment thread on Jillee's page I noticed many people were unable to obtain her miraculous results using the peroxide mixture, so I was not alone.

So now that my 'good' cookie sheets were restored, I dug out the REALLY nasty ones, we all have them, usually they're kept buried in the cupboard, but that's actually where I hide my good ones from Dan - my fiance and baby-daddy, usually I refer to him as my husband, it sounds less ghetto. I only allow him to use the bad ones as I am 95% sure whatever he is cooking will be left in too long and bubble over, then left out for it to really stick on before being placed in the dishwasher to get further baked on...

I knew there wasn't a chance that either of the cleaner's mentioned above would even begin to touch this mess, but what about Oven Cleaner... I know I was trying to avoid it in my 'Oven Cleaning Expedition' but I needed to break out the big guns for this job. I sprayed down the pans and sat them on top of garbage bags on my oven racks overnight. When I pulled them from the oven in the morning you could see the layer of grease on top of them.

After scrubbing down with an SOS pad (I went shopping) and some dish water I could see the sparkle coming through! There was still quite a bit of gunk left so I decided to go for Round Two.

Using a garbage bag as a tent, I placed the cookie sheet on the bottom and sprayed the oven cleaner until I could no longer see the pan - be sure to use Oven Cleaner in a well ventilated area as it tends to cut off your breathing. Then tie the garbage in a knot and set outside overnight, even better if you could set it somewhere that it could absorb some sunshine.

This afternoon I opened the bag and saw the same layer of grease had risen, I scrubbed down again with an SOS pad and dish soap and got even more grime off. I am satisfied with my results now, as I mentioned they aren't my 'good' cookie sheets but by repeating this process another time, or having the aid of sunshine they could almost be restored to 90%.

The results are pretty outstanding in my mind (if you can't see the results in the muffin tin, it's because I used the crummy peroxide solution on it rather than oven cleaner).

Rating: F (for the pin)

            A (for oven cleaner!)