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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser: Review

Handy Gourmet Batter Dispenser
Product Review


Making cupcakes are difficult for me.  I have bad wrists, so it's slightly painful for me to hold up my KitchenAid bowl and pour cake batter into 24 cupcake liners.  I've tried other methods for getting batter into cupcake pans, but have had rather messy results.  After thinking about it one night, it struck me that there must be some tool for pouring pancake batter at restaurants.  The internet told me that they are called "batter dispensers".  On amazon.com, I grabbed one for less than 10 bucks.



This particular product is called the Handy Gourmet Pancake Batter Dispenser.  It's very shiny.  That pleases me.  There is a small hole at the bottom of the container that's blocked by a piece of plastic.  When you squeeze the handle, the plastic slides away and the batter is free to flow out.  The bottom of the dispenser has a built in holder so you can set the whole thing down on any flat surface.



 The dispenser holds approximately 4 cups of batter (regular box cake mixes are ~5 cups).  


After at batch of cuppies, I've concluded it has some pros and cons.  

FAILs:
  • The container can't hold an entire batch of cake mix.  This requires a refill part-way through filling the cupcake pans.
  • Leakage is inevitable.  I had several drops of batter escape through the supposedly closed hole soon after I poured the batter into the container.  After several squeezes, batter starts to get inside the bottom of the handle.
  • The last bit of batter takes a long time to flow out of the dispenser.
FTWs:
  • Pouring batter into the dispenser was easy.  It has a wide mouth with slanted sides at the top.
  • The handle was easy to squeeze.
  • Batter poured very quickly at first.  The first dozen cuppy liners were filled so fast, it was amazing.
  • It was easy to pour a little batter at a time.  When I had filled most of my cuppies to about 2/3rds full, I went back and added some drops to those that could have used more batter.  
  • I didn't drip while filling the cuppies!  No random batter drops on the tops of the pans that would get all burnt and I'd have to scrub off!!!
  • The whole thing is easy to clean.  The batter rinsed off easily, and I just did some gentle wipes with a soapy sponge to clean the whole thing.
Conclusion: 

Well, for me, this is a great tool.  It's probably much easier for other people to utilize some other way (e.g. using an ice cream scope).  But at $10, really, it's pretty cool.  And some day I'm sure I'll have to make pancakes for a mess of people and will be thanking my lucky stars that I bought this.

Now that business is over, wanna see something funny?  The instructions had a few Engrish moments that made me laugh.



UPDATE (03/27/2010)
I still love this dispenser.  Last night I was able to fill cups with batter WHILE holding my 10 month old baby.  She got a little clingy and patiently watched me as I evenly filled my pans while sitting on my hip.  It may be a single-task tool, but I love it.

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