Shopping

Serious hardware stores seem to be having a hard time here in the Home Counties, with most of the independents having gone and with Robert Dyas looking none too healthy. But in Ely we have Cutlack's, on the other island we have Hurst's and last week we made time to make the acquaintance of Lawson's in Tavistock.

A shop with a fine stock of bakeware and we left with two 10 inch, loose bottomed baking tins. Rather more substantial affairs than the ones bought from Hong Kong and noticed at reference 5. It will be interesting to see if they are worth the extra, with cheap and cheerful from Hong Kong having served well so far.

Another difference is that the people at Hong Kong put a slight taper on their tins so that they stack, a wheeze which the people at Birmingham - Silverwood - did not think to copy. And then the two new tins are not quite the same as each other, perhaps this year's model and last year's model. It will be interesting to see if they exhibit different behaviour in the oven.

Reference 1: https://www.lawsonshop.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.silverwood-bakeware.com/. Clearly serious people when it comes to bread and cake tins. For the present tins see round cake tins.

Reference 3: https://hurst-iw.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.cutlacks.co.uk/home.aspx.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/06/tins-from-hong-kong.html.