Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

In case you were wondering, there is a God.

The Dough-Nu-Matic, available via the SkyMall in-flight catalog, is a miniature version of the Krispy Kreme fryer/conveyor belt that forms and fries savory doughnuts.

For just $130, you can make very small doughnuts at the clip of a dozen every six minutes. That means you can eat 120 miniature doughnuts every hour without leaving your home. You can make doughnuts in your bathroom and eat them in the shower. You can place doughnuts on each of your fingers, then eat them off like the magical Mr. Doughnut Hands. You can … Read more

If some digital wine coolers are the subject of dubious distinction, perhaps their manufacturers should expand their product lines. Take Waeco, for instance. Not only does it cater to beverages of the grape, but it pays homage to hops and barley as well.

Its "MyFridge" line includes a keg cooler that "utilizes the century-old, well-proven principle of traditional broaching instead of pumping the beer needlessly through hoses inside the cooler." The appliance uses a "simple aeration mechanism" that keeps its precious contents at optimum temperatures while providing a more sanitary way to dispense it, … Read more

AOL and the Campbell Soup Company have teamed up to make the food section of AOL's Web site a little more enticing. A new section, launched today, is called "Dinner Tonight" and features a quick and easy recipe for each night of the week. Users can tab through to see the suggested recipes for the whole week. AOL will include more than 2,000 Campbell's recipes in that section. But don't assume it's all going to be chicken baked in a can of cream of mushroom soup. Recipes for this week also come from … Read more

Let's have a show of hands of all the people who have an espresso maker (probably from their wedding registry) that's still sitting in its box or is stowed away in some unreachable cupboard. Machines that make espresso drinks are one of those kitchen gadgets that seem like a great idea but never seem to get used.

This is probably due to a variety of reasons: they're complicated to use; the espresso's cool by the time the milk is hot; or they just don't make good espresso.

But here's one I dare say I … Read more

Here's one for the wedding registry: a gold-and-diamond-studded pot that carries a price tag just north of $200,000. The 11-inch saucepan from cookware manufacturer Fissler features almost 2.2 pounds of solid gold in its lid and side handles and logo. But what's gold without diamonds? The saucepan features 200 of them, in various sizes. It also comes packaged in a jewelry box made of root wood and accompanied by the appropriate quality certificate.

The costly cookware is not exactly being mass-produced: Each saucepan is handmade to order in Germany and available only to "the exclusive … Read more

Our appreciation of wine notwithstanding, we're not so sure about the need for tabletop digital coolers.

The "Waring Pro" model that we posted earlier this year, for example, apparently had been discounted from $120 to $24 at Kohl's before being pulled from its virtual shelves altogther. Still, others keep coming on the market despite this apparently unconvincing demand.

Waeco's "MyFridge MF-1W" wine cooler--sorry, that's wine "climatiser," according to Appliancist--seems to do pretty much the same thing as the Waring Pro but for more money. It also has the look of … Read more

Making a Cylon Jack-o-Lantern will be a piece of cake--er, pie--with the Pumpkin Gutter, a $12 drill attachment that lets you zip through the sticky pumpkin prep stage and get right to carving. All you have to do is cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin, use the dishwasher-safe Pumpkin Gutter to loosen the strings and thin out the walls, and then dump the guts out. The tool even leaves the seeds intact for those who like to turn them into snacks.

We're always wary of seasonal gadgets, which often turn out to be a waste of … Read more

Is there anything more annoying than walking into the kitchen to refill your water glass, only to find that your roommate/child/spouse/co-habitation partner has left the pitcher completely empty? Well, actually that car alarm beeping outside is pretty annoying. And so are all those Colorado Rockies insta-fans. But you get the picture. Whenever you innocently stumble upon an empty water pitcher, before you can get that cool, refreshing goodness you have to fill up the pitcher and wait f-o-r-e-v-e-r while you watch it drip... drip... drip...… Read more

Kristina Nielsen has a growing collection of recipes, culled from friends, family members, magazines, books, Web sites and the occasional food package label. She keeps some of them in a binder and some loosely shoved in a drawer; some are neatly printed, some hastily scribbled on notes. Others live online in her recipe boxes on various sites. Together they represent the culmination of the 10 years she's spent learning how to cook new dishes. Now, a company called TasteBook wants to take Kristina's recipe collection--and those of amateur chefs like her--into the 21st century.

TasteBook, which plans to … Read more