Dork Adore » Cooking

Make your own Iron Man, Thor and Captain America cakes!

Emma Cossey — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:00:30 +0000

I love cake. Who doesn’t? And I have a soft spot for Marvel movies (yeah, even Thor. For very, very shallow reasons). So this Marvel Cakelet pan is right up my street.

This cake pan has moulds for three of the characters from next year’s mega-movie, The Avengers, (Iron Man, Thor and Captain America), so it would be great for a bit of comic book-inspired afternoon tea before you hit the cinema. All you need is a bit of practice with an icing bag.

You can get the Marvel Cakelet pan from Williams Sonoma for £25.45.

The bad news is, it’s not eligible for international shipping, so you might want to get a kind friend in the USA to ship it over to you.

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Tefal Actifry. Dork Review

Emma Cossey — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:06:38 +0000

Diets suck.

Cutting out all the good stuff, eating salad and counting calories is a seriously boring way to spend your time. But for many of us, it’s essential to keep an eye on our food, to ensure we don’t end up shopping in the tent section of Argos.

One way of doing that is by altering the way we cook our food. Which is where the Tefal Actifry (£131.50) comes in. This alternative electric fryer cooks your chips with a tiny amount of oil, rather than submerging them in it.

I recently got a chance to try the ActiFry out. Here’s how it went.

The ActiFry is really simple to use. Simply pop your peeled and sliced potatoes into the tub of the ActiFry, pour a tablespoon of oil over the chips using the mini measuring spoon and close the lid.

The top of the AcriFry has a LCD display where you can choose the amount of time you want the chips to be cooked for, and hit start. 45 minutes later, you’ve got tasty and crispy chips.

This fryer isn’t limited to chips either. You can cook meat, fish, rice and stir-fried vegetables. The accompanying cookbook gives an assortment of ideas.

Here’s my verdict:

Wins points for

Ease of use: The time consuming bit is the peeling and slicing of the potatoes
Lack of odour: Unlike its full-fat brothers, the ActiFry has an odourless filter to stop your kitchen smelling like a fish and chip shop.
Dishwasher safe: Most of the bits can be bunged in the dishwasher, although there is very little to clean up thanks to the lack of oil.

Loses points for

Time it takes to cook: It takes 40-45 minutes to cook enough chips for a family of four.
Noise: When it’s cooking, it has quite a loud humming sound. Not great if you have thin walls and irritable neighbours.

Conclusion

I’m a convert! I genuinely loved this product, and the chips went down really well with my picky family. A friend of mine uses her ActiFry regularly to create Cajun wedges, and I’d like to try a few more adventurous meals with it. Especially if I can use it to cook a variety of foods in a healthy way.

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Dork Review: Dishy iPhone cooking app

Emma Cossey — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Catering for a dinner party has got to be up there on the stress scale with organising a wedding or a surprise birthday party.

We’ve all seen the Come Dine With Me episodes, where the host cries/gets drunk/screams at her guests when the meal falls to pieces. Cooking for a group of people, particularly if they have varied food tastes or allergies, can be a nightmare for even the most organised of us.

iPhone app Dishy hopes to show us the way through this social disaster of a situation with their cooking aid.

I’ve been testing it out this week, here’s how I got on.

The app allows you to choose a meal for each course you’re cooking, and give you the recipe and shopping list for each. Straightforward so far and similar to a lot of the current products floating around, especially in the Nintendo DS.

The thing I like about this app is the ability to choose your meal by diet, ingredient and time. So say you have a vegetarian coming to eat, pasta to use up, and 40 minutes to cook the dish, it will calculate all the best options.

Once you’ve picked your courses, you’re taken to the shopping list. Here you can remove the items you already have, so you’re ready to hit the shops.

The app also features a timings feature, so you can look at when you need to cook what, and an alarm to warn you when the food needs removing from the oven.

So, after testing it a few times, here are the pros and cons.

Wins points for:

Easy setup: No configuration needed, just download and install.
Share function: You can share an image of your masterpiece on Facebook and Twitter straight from the app.
Simple step-by-step guides
Suggestions: It suggests the perfect side dishes for your meal

Loses points for:

Lack of recipes: Only 95 at the moment, although it easily updated further down the line.

Conclusion

Coming in at £2.99, it’s seriously rivals products 10 times its price. Buy it and organise a Come Dine With Me week with friends to show off your culinary flair.

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Dork Review: Tefal VitaCuisine

Emma Cossey — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:00:52 +0000

Ah winter! How you tempt me with your takeaways, roast dinners and sticky toffee puddings. Unfortunately, your chilly winds and drizzly rain mean the only exercise my jogging bottoms are getting is getting up off the sofa.

Time to start consuming something a little healthier.

An easy way to eat healthier is to cook your food differently, and steaming is one of the best ways. Tefal have kindly let me try their VitaCuisine steamer to cook something hearty but tasty.

The VitaCuisine comes with three compartments, so you can cook an entire meal in one go. The two stainless steel baskets at the bottom are suitable for fruit and vegetables, whilst the flat cooking plate is suited to meat and poultry.

I tested it out with a basic chicken and vegetable recipe. To set it up after the initial cleaning, you fill the base with water, and then fill and stack all the other bits up together.

The steamer comes with a timer and a vitamin + button to ensure you get as much of the goodness out of your food as possible.

20 minutes later and I’m tucking into my dinner!

The VitaCuisine wins points for:

Ease of use: Fill it with water, pop your food in, and set the timer
Compact: Smaller then the usual high stacked steamers
Economical: Cooking all your dinner in one machine saves energy and time.

Loses points for:

Washing up. Cooking for just me meant I had to wash up 6 different sections. Although this would be acceptable when cooking for a family

Conclusion

I really enjoyed using this, and I’d definitely use it again. Unlike other steamers I’ve used before, this one didn’t leak steam all over the place either.

I’d fully recommend it, especially if you’re looking to kick off those new year resolutions early.

VitaCuisine £77.03 from PixMania

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Dork Adore » Cooking

Make your own Iron Man, Thor and Captain America cakes!

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Tefal Actifry. Dork Review

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Dork Review: Dishy iPhone cooking app

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Dork Review: Tefal VitaCuisine

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