Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

This towel doesn’t have a built-in timer, thermometer or any kind of high-techery, but it’s probably still more useful than most of the gadgets in your kitchen. It features a print full of useful measurements and conversions (I had no idea there were 4 pecks in a bushel) and since it’s a towel, you don’t have to worry about it getting dirty since you can just throw it in the washing machine when you’re done cooking. $22 from Bailey Doesn’t Bark.

[ Useful Towel ] VIA [ swissmiss ]

By Evan Ackerman

It may not look like much, but physicists from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany have invented the “perfect” coffee cup. Why “perfect?” It’s all about the temperature: this coffee cup is capable of maintaining your coffee (or any other beverage) at an ideal temperature for a full 20 – 30 minutes. The ideal temperature for coffee, incidentally, is 58 degrees Celsius, but personally I prefer to drink tea (not coffee, tea, thank you) at something closer to 59… Yeah, I like living dangerously.

The cup is constructed of a swirly looking aluminum frame covered with a ceramic material. The spaces around the frame are filled with a PCM, or phase changing material. PCM is super neat stuff that is only happy at a very specific temperature. When you add heat to a PCM, it absorbs it and turns into a liquid, kinda like wax. If things start to cool down, the PCM turns back into a solid, releasing the heat as it does so, doing its best to keep itself (and its surroundings) as close to that happy temperature as possible. So when it comes to coffee, the PCM will first cool the liquid down to the ideal temperature by absorbing heat, and then keep it at that temperature as it releases that heat. Best part is, it’s totally free, in that it’s “powered” by absorbing heat from something that’s too hot. And hey, did I mention that it also works in reverse? A different type of PCM can be used to stabilize cold liquids, too.

The only catch to this technology is that PCMs are temperature specific. So, you’d need a hot PCM cup for hot beverages and a cold PCM cup for cold beverages. And they’re not likely to be cheap:

In the meantime, it won’t be long before the IBP’s new table products arrive in stores. Their steep price tags should easily give them away. “We don’t know how expensive they’ll be yet,” Sedlbauer says. “We are already talking with different companies. If we can find a partner to work together with, the first mugs could already be on sale by the end of the year.”

I’d imagine that a steep price tag wouldn’t dissuade that many people from a coffee cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature… I mean, you only really need one, right? And if you drink coffee (or tea, which is way better) every day, it’ll easily pay for itself in convenience. As long as they dress it up a little bit first, of course.

[ Spiegel ] VIA [ Gizmodo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Kitchen gadgets can be as fun as any piece of high-techery you have around the house, but what’s the point of a counter full of gizmos when there’s no room left to actually cook? Well at least this Foldable Kitchen Scale won’t be in the way. It can handle loads up to 6.6 lbs providing measurements in 1g units, but folds up to a footprint no larger than a spice shaker. It’s powered by 2 x AAA batteries which are good for about 6 months of average use, and besides providing weight measurements it’s also got a 60 second timer, though that might be a mistake in the copy since I’m not sure what you could really cook in just 60 seconds. (Flash fry a buffalo with 20 seconds to spare?) ~$55 from Pro-Idee.

[ Foldable Kitchen Scale ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It looks like Bodum’s unofficial mission to give every kitchen a colorful makeover continues with their Bistro Flatbed Toaster. Like the company’s conventional toasters this model is available in 8 different stylish colors, but unlike their conventional toasters there’s no slots on this one, just a stainless steel flatbed cooktop that uses a 700-watt heating element to toast slot-unfriendly items like croissants, baguettes and leftover pizza slices.

There’s a simple dial allowing you to specify the level of browning, and when not in use the Flatbed Toaster can be stored on its side, freeing up counter space. They appear to be available on the Bodum UK site for about $98 after currency conversion, but it looks like Hammacher sells them as well for $89.95.

[ Bodum Bistro Flatbed Toaster ] VIA [ bookofjoe ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Avoid those inevitable complaints about someone getting a bigger slice of cake than someone else at your next party with this Musical Cake Tray from Deni. At the push of a button the tray will play Happy Birthday in case you forget how the song goes, and a ring of LED lights will help you evenly cut from 2 to 12 pieces of cake or pizza or some manner of round food. Seems like a novelty right? Well it pretty much is, except for the $59.99 price tag.

[ Musical Cake Tray ] VIA [ GadgetGrid ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The only thing that stops me from cooking more is sheer laziness, but this new contraption from Kenwood doesn’t give me much of an excuse any more. It looks like your standard mixer, with a large 6.7L bowl capacity and 8 mixing speeds, but it also features an 1100W induction heating system that allows you to cook food directly in the mixing bowl.

Temperatures can be set between 20°C to 140°C for warming or actual cooking, and there’s even a steam basket attachment allowing you to prepare an entire meal without ever turning on the stove. The only downside is that once again convenience doesn’t come cheap, so you can expect to pay around $1,600+ for the Cooking Chef.

[ Kenwood KM070 Cooking Chef ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Chris Scott Barr

Don’t you hate those times where you have something to drink, but nowhere to set it? Maybe you’re lying in bed, and the nightstand is too far away. Or perhaps your desk just has so much junk on it that you can’t find even a few inches of space to set your coffee.  Whatever the reason, if you have nowhere to set your drink, then you might be happy to see this otherwise useless mug.

Traditional coffee mugs are flat on the bottom, which make them almost impossible to balance on your lap. However, this Lap and Knee Mug has an angled bottom. This makes your lap the perfect place to keep your drink. Of course hot coffee isn’t something I’d want to keep anywhere near my crotch. Oh, and and you can’t actually set this on a flat surface without spilling a portion of the contents. Methinks your $16 is better used elsewhere.

[ Uncommon Goods ] VIA[ FoolishGadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While it won’t completely replace a standalone scale in your kitchen, this clever measuring cup that features a digital scale built right in should make a few things easier when it comes to following recipes. It can be used to measure both weight and volume depending on what a recipe calls for, and it includes preprogrammed volume conversions for ingredients like milk, water, oil, sugar and flour. The scale can weigh ingredients up to 6.6lbs and the measuring cup has a healthy 4 cup or 3 liter capacity. $29.99 from Amazon.

[ Taylor Digital Measuring Cup Scale ] VIA [ The Green Head ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The WMF1 is another one of those compact coffee machines that uses “coffee pads” to brew a single cup at a time, pretty much anywhere you’re willing to take it. But it manages to stand out from the crowd by oozing with style. While the machine itself is made of plastic, the included mug is made of porcelain and from what I can tell, given the shape of the cutout, that’s the only mug you’ll be able to use it with.

The water reservoir only holds enough H2O for a single cup of joe, which is a good thing since it means you’ll have to use fresh water each time, and the machine is only heating as much water as it needs to. Now I’m not entirely sure of the pricing details, but the WMF1 comes in a variety of different color schemes including the Kiwi model pictured above.

[ WMF1 Coffee Pad Machine ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]