Why two minutes with parchment saves a whole bake

A sponge can rise like a dream and still be ruined in the last thirty seconds — the moment you turn it out and half of it stays behind, welded to the base of the tin. Paper is cheap; a torn Dorset apple cake is not. Lining does three jobs at once: it stops sticking, it insulates the outside of the cake so the edges set before the middle has caught up, and it turns washing up into a thirty-second rinse rather than a twenty-minute soak.

You can skip it for silicone moulds and for a well-used springform with a loose base, but for any metal tin, line it. Even a beautifully seasoned tin will betray you eventually, usually on the day you have guests.

The kit, and the one thing not to substitute

• Baking parchment — the silicone-coated stuff sold in rolls or flat sheets. It is reusable two or three times for dry bakes, so a roll lasts a season.
• Unsalted butter or a neutral oil for greasing. A knob of butter wrapped in its own paper is the neatest tool there is.
• A pencil, scissors and a ruler. Keep them in the baking drawer; hunting for them mid-recipe is the real faff.
• A length of string for measuring the circumference of a round tin.

Do not reach for greaseproof paper. It looks similar on the shelf, but it is thinner, it is not silicone-coated, and it will stick to a fruit cake with a vengeance. If a recipe says "line the tin", it means parchment.

Round tins: trace the base, snip the collar

Start with the base disc, because that is the bit that decides whether your sponge comes out whole.

• Stand the tin on a sheet of parchment and draw round the base with a pencil held upright, so you trace the true width rather than a shrunken version of it. Cut just inside the line — a disc a millimetre or two small drops in far more easily than one cut to an exact match.
• For an awkward size, fold a square of parchment in half, then in half again, then into a triangle. Hold the folded point at the centre of the tin and snip the open edge to the radius — half the tin's width. Unfold and you have a perfect circle.
• For the sides, cut a strip as deep as the tin plus 2cm. Measure the circumference with string, or simply reckon on roughly three times the diameter for a 20cm tin.
• Snip little notches along the bottom edge of the strip every 2cm. This is the trick that lets the paper curve round the wall instead of buckling into folds that leave ridges in your sponge.
• Butter the tin, press the collar in with the notches at the base, overlap the ends, then drop the disc on top and smooth it flat.

Square tins: the envelope with built-in handles

Brownies, flapjacks and ginger cake all do best in a square tin, and all three are sticky enough to need a sling. Cut a square of parchment big enough that it will drape over all four sides with a generous 5cm overhang, then sit the tin in the middle and make a diagonal cut from each outer corner of the paper in to the corner of the tin's base. Press the four flaps up the sides and smooth the creases into the corners.

The result is a paper envelope that holds its shape while you pour, and gives you two handles to lift the whole slab clear once it is cool. Cut cleaner squares, and no knife meeting metal.

Loaf tins: line it like a hammock

A 2lb loaf tin is the workhorse of a coastal kitchen — lemon and thyme loaf in spring, banana bread on a wet Sunday, a dark malt loaf when the evenings draw in.

• Cut a rectangle as wide as the tin's interior width plus twice its depth, and as long as the tin plus twice its depth, with an extra 5cm at each end for handles.
• Snip diagonally into each corner, up to the line where the base meets the wall.
• Butter the tin, press the paper in, and ease the corners flat so the batter cannot sneak underneath.

Once baked and cooled for ten minutes, lift the loaf out by the paper ends, peel it away and leave it to finish cooling on a rack. No tipping, no thudding, no cracks across the top.

Greasing, collars and damp sea air

Always grease the tin before the paper goes in. A smear of butter is what makes parchment cling rather than spring open while you are spooning in batter. Grease the paper too for anything sticky — fruit cakes, gingerbread, treacle-heavy mixtures — and for a Christmas cake, double-line the tin and tie a collar of brown paper round the outside with string to stop the crust darkening before the centre is cooked.

Two exceptions worth remembering: don't line or grease the sides of a fatless whisked sponge or a soufflé. Those need to climb rough walls, and slippery sides will bring them down. And if you bake within earshot of the sea, you will know that a damp sea fret makes parchment curl and refuse to sit flat. Let it come to room temperature before cutting, smooth it with the flat of a warm hand, and it will behave. Line the tin first, before you weigh a single ingredient, and the whole bake downstream becomes calmer.