My post the other day about the breadmaker got me thinking. Basically, while having the means to easily make your own bread must certainly be nice, a breadmaker is pretty much a luxury that it wouldn’t be too hard to live without. I mean, you could just buy a loaf of Kingsmill. Or if the urge to bake becomes too much, your regular oven is a perfectly acceptable substitute.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t own a breadmaker; in fact, as I said in my other post, I think they’re pretty nifty. The one we were working on had literally hundreds of settings for all types of bread – wholemeal, granary, sourdough, with seeds on top… the works.

But it got me curious, so I decided to browse Amazon’s kitchen & home section for other maybe-helpful-but-probably-not-needed appliances. Here’s the pick of what I found:

Home Candy Floss Maker

The product description on Amazon promises the ‘joy of the funfair in your own home’ which sounds like a bit of a lofty promise. I can’t say definitively though, as I’ve not tested it. I picture this being in the kitchens of retired circus clowns who pine for the glory days when they were on the road nine months of the year.

Pro Quality Vacuum Food Sealer Machine

It may look like it’s modelled on a fax machine, but this thing actually vacuum packs your food like they do at the butchers. It promises to ‘keep food fresher for longer’, and I’m in no doubt that it succeeds at that task admirably – but I’m pretty sure that with a price of around £70, you’re better off sticking with clingfilm or Tupperware.

Mini Deep Fat Fryer

There’s something slightly forlorn about this little fella. I think it would look a bit lonely and small on a kitchen worktop, next to the veritable worktop behemoths that are the kettle and the microwave. I suppose the redeeming feature is that while cooking with it you could pretend to be a giant using a regular sized deep fat fryer.

Electric Cheese Grater

Call me old fashioned, but I think that having a machine grate cheese for you is just a tad on the wrong side of the line marked ‘workshy’. The description on Amazon of this grater says it’s ‘ideal for Parmesan and hard cheeses’, but at just under 50 quid, I’d want my electric cheese grater to have a wider range. I’d want it to be able to grate Laughing Cow.

Mini Cupcake Maker

This appliance’s sole purpose is to ‘make 6 mini cupcakes’.

If you own any of these appliances, I’d love to hear from you – how often do you use them? Maybe you feel I’ve been a little too harsh on an appliance you get really good use out of. If so, get in touch, I’m all ears!

Tags: Appliance Spare Parts, Kitchen Appliances