My favorite kitchen tools of 2011

I kind of meant to do a whole series of my favorites from 2011 - but I ran out of time! Anyway, some of my favorite tools this year:


Tovolo Better Batter Tool

This looks so strange, and possibly useless, but it's actually really convenient! I love it for stirring together things like pancake batter, or lightly beating a few eggs. Great! I had a friend buy it for me at Sur La Table, I don't know of any international source.


CrockPot

I'm so glad crock-pots finally made it to Sweden! I love mine, and I can't wait to use it much more. I need to get more organized though and plan ahead - this fall has been bad for cooking, in general. I've had a lot of other things on my mind...


Cake lifter from Nordic Ware.

Man, this is good. It's the solution to many broken cake layers and tarts. I love it.


Sil-Pin rolling pin

This looks so useless - but it really isn't. It's a tiny rolling pin for those of you who are, like me, pastry challenged. I can't roll out pastry to save my life, so I usually just press the dough into my tart tin - but with this little buddy, I can roll it out while inside the tin! It works surprisingly well.


Dualit toaster

And I have to mention my glossy red toaster, with extra wide slots to fit bagels. Awesome.



And an honorable mention to my all time favorite: my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer. It's served me for many years now, and I never want to be without it. It did suffer a small injury this year - the meatal band around the head fell off and I can't get it back on, but as it doesn't seem to affect performance in any way... I don't mind so much.