One of my most-used kitchen tools these days is the dough scraper.  Mundane, yes, but also quite useful, and not just for its eponymous purpose.  As of late, I’ve been using it to slice brownies or bar cookies in their pans.  The user holds the handle on the top of the scraper, using a downward motion to slice; this eliminates the awkwardness of holding a knife, bumping its handle against the sides of the pan. 

I also hate lining pans with buttered parchment; yes, it helps to lift the finished product out of the pan and onto a board for cutting, but it’s incredibly awkward.  If you have a dough scraper, don’t line the pan; just butter it, pour in the batter, bake, and slice.  You can then remove the goods to a pretty serving platter. 

You can, of course, use it for its intended purpose as well, scraping and lifting pastry dough from a board.

Moreover, this little tool is only 6 inches long and lays flat, so you can throw it into a drawer and forget about it (until the next time you have a pan of something delicious that needs slicing, that is).

I bought mine at Sur La Table for a mere $5; I would urge you to add this to your arsenal, too.

Like most city-dwellers I know, I am cursed with a particularly tiny kitchen. As such, I’m constantly struggling to negotiate what little space I have, both to work effectively and to turn out a decent-looking and -tasting product, be it a layer cake or a fried egg.

My creative process is usually divided, more or less equally, between the kitchen table, where I hunch awkwardly to make a batter, and the sink area, which has the closest outlet for my hand mixer or food processor. Imagine how pleased I was, then, when Sal transformed my ugly shelving unit, languishing in the corner, into a workstation with storage underneath.

A piece of furniture I inherited with the apartment, it has 3 shelves and is waist-height. I had been using it to haphazardly store pans and flour and other odds and ends; it’s one of those pieces that I looked at so often, I couldn’t imagine using it for anything else. However, with a pair of fresh eyes, its top became a workstation, the perfect height for mixing, measuring, and pouring. I’ve left my hand-mixer on top, plugged into an extension cord that runs behind the stove to an outlet. I also have a canister of tools, such as spatulas, within easy reach. The shelves below now house flour and sugar and the like, with pans and bowls on the bottom.

The whole project took about two hours (including obsessing and tweaking time), and I bought nothing. Most people I know have one of these ambiguous shelving pieces, usually storing books or acting as a base for lamps and such in bedrooms or living rooms. Why not turn it into something really functional? Admittedly, mine is nothing to look at; at some point, I’ll probably sand and paint it, or buy a new, nicer one altogether. To further beautify, I could hang a curtain or other pretty fabric in front, suspended by a tension rod, to hide the stuff inside. But, aesthetics aside, I have allocated a specific area in my kitchen for baking purposes. My messes are more contained, and it makes me so happy to look at my pretty (relatively speaking), organized workstation.

For the past week-and-a-half, the gas in my apartment building has been disconnected (as those who know me are surely sick of hearing about). Finally, after much frustration, complaining, and crying (yes, really), the light shone through the clouds: why not try to bake in a toaster oven? In a tiny apartment equipped with an unusually small oven, it seemed appropriate to downsize yet again, in the name of cookies needing to be baked.

It bears noting that my oven is actually brand-new; the old one was replaced a couple of months ago. However, newness does not, in fact, guarantee a good oven.  My apartment’s internal temperature still rises 20 degrees when I preheat.  Cakes still come out unevenly browned unless I rotate them frequently and diligently (and, honestly, who can devote 40 minutes solely to watching a cake bake?), and cookies in the back of the oven emerge with crispier bottoms than those fortunate enough to bake up front. 

The fact remains that, for larger projects like cakes or dinners for more than one, using the oven, however unreliable, is mandatory. For smaller baked goods, though, I’d like to speak up in favor of the toaster oven. Its small size allows it to reach the desired temperature quickly, nearly eliminating the need for preheating and taking less time to recover when the door has been opened. I would also assert that the size also makes for more even baking, as the heat is contained and circulates in a smaller area.  It also precludes the inevitable overheating of the kitchen (and entire apartment, in my case).

Another benefit is that a small batch of cookies (in this case, butterscotch-white chocolate, courtesy of Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook) bakes in 7-8 minutes, rather than 12. As a result, if you make a smaller batch, or want to freeze half of the dough, you can bake what you do want quickly.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to use a toaster oven, though, is the quality of the finished product.  After several false starts, and according adjustments to baking time, the resulting cookies were nicely caramelized on the outside, soft but not under-done on the inside, and the bottoms were browned but not tough, lending an appealingly chewy dimension.

Another nice surprise was the baking sheet included in the box: it’s surprisingly sturdy, fits perfectly into the oven, and contributes to that great texture on the underside of the cookies. The only con: I’ve been unable to find a silicon baking sheet that will fit its dimensions, so will be using parchment paper for the foreseeable future.

I acknowledge that, in a city where space is at a premium, one may not willingly relinquish kitchen real estate to a toaster oven.  At present, mine is perched atop my useless stove.  But why not give it a try?  The perks of having a back-up oven are incidental; you might find, as I did, that the resulting goodies are worth the loss of counter space.