Recipe(tried): Answered My Own Question

Ok, after extensive research I believe I can give you more than you want to know, I am confident after having done the research that I will stick with buying the Silpat.

The following are clippings of comments, an EXCELLENT article (please read), and plenty of resources.

It is a professional baking sheet. These baking mats are becoming more and more common in professional kitchens. Re-useable thousands of times, they are a very good investment for your kitchen at home or work. They are non-stick, and available in half and full sheet pan sizes.
Some of their many uses include:

baking cookies, especially wafer cookies
stenciling various patterns with tuile paste
combing lines for a striped effect on a swiss roll sponge sheet
sugar work
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: Hi. These silicone pads are very nice to use; makes any sheet pan non-stick, easy to clean, etc. I first used them in Paris at cheffing school and still use them. In France, they are called EXPAT and come in several sizes. One place you can buy them (they ship to the US) is at the famous cooking store E. Dehillerin in Paris. They have a website: www.e-dehillerin.fr and, although the website has only a tiny fractions of what they actually have, you can ask for the sizes and prices of the Expats. English spoken. I hope you will visit them if you go to
Paris--it's a chef's heaven that I've been visiting for 30 years. Address: 18 & 20 rue Coquilliere in the 1st arrondissement, near the Forum and the St. Eustache church. By the way, their prices on everything are MUCH lower than I have ever found anywhere else in the US or online. Ask for their catalog, too. Better than the website but still only part of what they have.
http://chefsnet.com/wboard/messages/233.html
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The best way to care for your silpats is to hand wash them using a soap like Dawn with a non-abrasive sponge on both side. Then towel or air dry and that should work just fine. Store
flat.
http://chefsnet.com/wboard/messages/188.html
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"...showed it (Silpat) on a short TV segment with Jan
D'Atri, and decided to see how far I could
really go with it. SoI burnt some sugar on it
in a 500 degree oven-we actually forgot about
it until the smoke billowing out ofthe oven
alerted us-and then showed the results. The
blackened sugar just peeled off, with not a
residuesticking to the pad..
One of our customers says she rolls out her
cookies on the pad, cuts them out and then
removes theexcess dough, so she doesn't have
to move the cookies themselves. Great for very
delicate doughs.Someone else asked if it was
possible to use it under a roast, and of
course it is. I also put it under myapple pie,
which always boils over in the oven. A very
mundane use, but it sure saves on the
cleanup!.Wehaven't found anyone yet who's used
it 3000 times-that's how long they're supposed
to last-but ours arecertainly getting well
used in our kitchen. It saves on buying
parchment paper, too!! "
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Silpat baking sheet liners. These are special
baking sheet liners that are supposed to
eliminate the use of sprays and greases. They
are expensive, and are not readily available
in every store. While they do work, as
claimed, you might want to save your money.
Unless you do a lot of baking.
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This state-of-the-art silicone baking sheet is
an economical and space saving. It goes from
freezer to oven more than 2000 times, requires
NO GREASE and cleans with just a stroke of a
sponge. Used by pastry chefs all over the
world.
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And it's reuseable, just wash in warm soapy
water after use.
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Yes, Martha Stewart first brought it to our
attention, but we've been getting great
feedback from ourcustomers. It's a flexible,
reusable, non-stick baking mat, almost jelly-
like, that has uses far beyond cookies.
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The Silpat baking sheet is among the newest,
most innovative products to recently arrive
from France. Slipped onto an aluminum or black
steel baking sheet, it immediately transforms
that surface into a non-stick one. It's
unbeatable at releasing tuiles.
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You can use either side, although one side is completely
smooth, so I generally use that. Do not
grease it. Just plop your cookies on it,
proceed as usual baking, I geneeally bake
around 350-400, and have no problems. Rinse
in soapy water and use again and again and
again. Have used mine at least 100 times. The
only time I did not like it was with
meringues.
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Silpat Mat- non stick baking sheet, made of silicon teflon. Reuseable between 2000 and 300 times. Replaces parchement paper and saves money and time. No grease necessary and easy to clean. Priced per sheet, white edges.
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Solutions to sticky situations

By CHRISTOPHER KIMBALL KITCHEN DETECTIVE One of the biggest problems in baking is getting a cookie (especially a sticky one such as a lace cookie) off a baking sheet or a cake out of a pan all in one piece. Most of us blithely use butter and flour as our all-purpose solution to this problem, but a variety of new products have made this choice more complicated and also more interesting. Sprays, papers and reusable liners are all possibilities, but I wondered which product would work best; so I set out to perform a series of tests. First, a bit about each of the items tested:

Unsalted Butter: the classic choice and the one that carries the most flavor. $2-$3 per pound.

Crisco: hydrogenated vegetable oil, which remains in a solid state at room temperature. It is available in packs of three one-cup sticks which cost about $2.

Baker's Joy: a spray made from soybean oil, propellant, soy lecithin, flour and assorted chemicals. A five-ounce spray can costs $2.

Pam: also a spray made from canola oil, grain alcohol, lecithin and propellant. A six-ounce can costs $2.

Waxed paper: although this is usually used for storage and other kitchen tasks, I wondered if waxed paper had a place in baking, too.

Parchment paper: a silicon-coated paper made specifically for baking, you can purchase parchment paper in rounds for cake pans, in sheets or in rolls.

Super parchment: reusable light brown stick-resistant sheets measuring 13 x17 inches, they can be cut to fit cake pans or sheet pans. One set of sheets costs $8.50.

Teflon bakeware liners: black, non-stick reusable liners available in 9-inch rounds (two for $7), also sold in sheets. These can be cut to fit pans, if desired.

Silpat: the heaviest of the reusable liners, made from a silicon-covered fiber. The manufacturer recommends that it not be cut to fit a pan. A half sheet costs $12.50.
I tried three recipes: butter cookies, lace cookies and a sponge cake. Both cookies were baked on cookie sheets, and I tested each item based on (1) the final shape of the cookies, (2) what the bottoms looked like after baking and (3) how easy it was to take the cookies off the sheet. I also noted any difficulties with cleanup. For the cake, I was particularly interested in how well the bottom baked (was it too dark or too light?), and I judged the degree of difficulty in removing the cake from the pan.

I started with unsalted butter, which has an advantage in the taste department since it imparts flavor to the bottoms of cookies; but beware: butter is useless when baking something really sticky such as lace cookies, and for cakes, the pan also needs to be floured. Also, cleaning up a cookie sheet that has been buttered is difficult at best, requiring plenty of elbow grease.
Crisco performs in much the same manner as butter but has none of the flavor. Forget about it. Baker's Joy should be renamed Baker's Bane, since it sprays in clumps (it contains flour which does not spray evenly) and has a noticeable and unpleasant chemical flavor. It also did not do a good job with the lace cookies.

Pam performs about the same as Baker's Joy and also has a mildly unpleasant aftertaste. However, it does spray on evenly.

Waxed paper was a disaster. Wax melts when exposed to high heat, resulting in cookies that were bonded tightly to the paper. It was even difficult to remove the cake from the waxed paper. (I doubt that this application is recommended by the manufacturer.)

Parchment paper was a clear winner. Even the lace cookies did not stick to the paper (although it had to be discarded and could not be reused) and cleanup was a cinch, since the cookies and cake never actually touched the pan. Super parchment works nicely: note that it is reusable and therefore needs to be cleaned after each use. I found it easier simply to discard regular parchment paper rather than having to clean, dry and store super parchment.

The Telfon product is very dark, which made it difficult to tell when the lace cookies were done. (Dark cookies against a dark paper makes it difficult to tell when the edges are browning, a reliable sign that cookies are properly baked.) I also felt that the bottom of the cake became too brown. However, nothing stuck to it. As with super parchment, cleanup is a problem.

Finally, I tried Silpat, which works in a wide range of temperatures up to 800 degrees. The good news is that nothing sticks to this stuff; the bad news is that you are not supposed to cut the sheets, so it cannot be used in a round cake pan. Silpat, however, was the clear winner for cookie sheets: the bottoms of the cookies came out perfectly and the light color makes it easy to tell when the cookies are done.

So, what to buy?

The reusable liners (Silpat was best) are more troublesome to use, but they are good for extremely sticky baked goods such as lace cookies, caramel or chocolate. Keep in mind that these liners need to be washed and dried after using. Also, some of them are not supposed to be cut, which makes them impossible to use for anything other than cookie sheets.
The sprays are universally awful: they impart an unwelcome aftertaste. Butter or butter and flour for cake pans works well enough and does add a nice touch of flavor, but don't use Crisco - it performs about the same as butter, but it has no flavor. Butter will produce a cookie sheet that is very hard to clean. The winner was regular parchment paper: it is inexpensive, there is no cleanup and it can be cut to fit any size pan. You can also slide off a sheet of baked cookies and slide on a new sheet with fresh dough and pop the pan back in the oven. This makes baking large batches quick and easy.