Novelty Cake PansNovelty Cake Pans
Along with Uranium glass, one of my favorite things to thrift are novelty cake pans. High quality ones (like those from Nordicware discussed on this page) can be pretty expensive to buy new, but they can often be found for just a few dollars at thrift stores!
Here are some of my favorites!! 
This was my first Nordicware piece, and the only one that I bought new. I really like this pan because it easily separates into cute little handheld honeycombs.
I recently used it to make little cornbread "muffins" and they turned out great! I mostly followed Make it Dairy Free's Vegan Cornbread recipe and I highly recommend it! I made a vegan "honey butter" glaze as per the recipe, which really tied in the bee theme.
This is a $5 thrift-store find and probably my most-used pan. The bugs are SO cute!!
As with any of these baking molds, any type of cake or quickbread recipe will work, but I particularly like using a variation of It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken's Champagne Cupcake recipe if I want a sweet treat. Sometimes I'll even throw some frozen blueberries in there too!
For extra indulgence, I like to paint a sweet glaze on top that'll seep into all the crevices and crannies. Depending on the flavor profile I want, I might do something like a splash of pomegranate juice in powdered sugar to make the glaze.
I audibly gasped when I saw this pan at a Goodwill. I LOVE trains and public transit, so naturally I love this cake pan. I've only used it a few times (it can be difficult to clean), but it's always baked up perfectly! In the past, I've made train carrot cakes with candied carrot coins for wheels.
Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures of train cakes I've baked, but looking up photo reviews online for this pan brings me endless joy. It's pretty much exclusively used by grandmothers who bake train cakes for their 3-year-old grandchildren's birthdays. I also love seeing what types of treats people decide to put in the fuel car in place of coal.
My newest addition! My friend found this cake pan at a thrift store and gave it to me as a present. Best gift ever!! I haven't gotten a chance to bake with it yet, but I can't wait. It's also a Nordicware so I'm sure it'll be great.
The official product photos are all understandably Christmassy (see above), but looking at customer reviews it seems like some people also use it to make "campfire" cakes, using melted jolly ranchers to make "fire." When I make something with this pan I'll update this page!
