Baking Can Be Fussy. This Nonstick Mat Is Not.

My sister and I are 14 years apart. She was going through puberty while I was still in diapers. By the time I was 4, she was off to college. And, as you can imagine, there was little for us to bond over when all I wanted to do was to play make-believe and she was already living real life.

After my sister left home, opportunities for us to spend quality time together became fewer and farther between—that is, until the holidays rolled around, and I could always count on her to spend hours baking cookies with me. With a set of measuring cups and a cookie press in hand, my sister and I were seemingly unstoppable, and our vanilla-scented sugar cookies quickly became a cherished family tradition.

After years of baking without a hitch, we thought we had mastered it—until an old, decrepit, no-longer-nonstick baking sheet wrecked a batch of our prized cookies and, in turn, ruined my life. (It was the closest thing to heartbreak that I, at the ripe age of 11, had ever experienced.)

To help calm an utterly devastated middle-schooler, my mom took me to my favorite store at the time, Williams Sonoma. (Yes.) There, she bought me my first Silpat mat, and the rest of my nonstick-baking journey is history.