Single Purpose Kitchen Gadgets I Love

Generally speaking I hate single purpose kitchen gadgets. They do nothing but take up precious cupboard space 99% of the time. Some, however, are worth every inch of space.

1. The cookie scoop.



Tired of dough sticking to spoons when you try to scoop it? Unevenly sized cookies where half burn and half are raw? Just plain want to make drop cookies faster? Cookie scoop! You can even make this a multi-purpose tool by using it for anything somewhat hefty that you need to scoop--fillings, gloppy salads, frostings.

2. Cherry Pitter



We bought one when we had a gallon bag of sour cherries and a hankering for jam. But even if you simply want to buy and eat cherries...this little gidget makes it so much more enjoyable. Wash and pit them in large batches and then eat them to your heart's content. You really can't multi-purpose it (unless you buy/grow unpitted olives) but it does at least fold and lock for storage.

3. Cake Tester



I know this one probably seems completely silly BUT it prevents you from leaving giant gashes in your bakes goods when you test them (I've never found toothpicks to go deep enough, so I used to use a butter knife. This is way better.) Good luck multi-purposing this, but it's cheap and takes up next to no space.

4. Iced Tea Maker



Yes, yes, I know. I could boil 3 quarts of water in a pot, steep the tea, and then dump it into a pitcher with some ice. Or? I could throw in some ice, some water, and a couple of tea bags. 10 minutes later? Perfect iced tea. Not so great for the sweet tea drinkers, but for us? Perfect and totally worth the counter space.(Also? That's not really tea, but that IS really the iced tea pitcher and shockingly, it's not something I take many pictures of, so use your imagination a bit. : )

5. Bread Maker



This one is a total splurge (or in our case, a lucky inheritance) but so very worth it. Fresh bread all the time? No sitting around babysitting loaves that rise? Yes, please! The closest we've come to multitasking is using it to make dough which we then rolled out for breadsticks and cinnamon rolls. In theory it makes jam. In theory. We've yet to test this. This particular one is a beast, turning out 2 pound loaves and taking up more than it's fair share of counter space. But for a carb happy household like ours? It's perfect.