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One of my husband’s favorite treats is ice cream.  He just loves the stuff.  I have to admit when you make your own it is really great.  During the summer months I love taking fresh strawberries and making them into ice cream.  Not only is the flavor really great, but I know what all the ingredients are in my ice creams.  The recipes are quite simple and the time it takes to make ice cream is well worth it.  One of the best kinds we make is cappuccino ice cream with chocolate covered almonds.  It takes very little time to mix the ice cream recipe - around 20-25 minutes in the machine.  Of course, your ice cream needs to chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before it is the consistency of ice cream you get in the freezer section. 

If you like ice cream, then these machines are a lot of fun and simple to use.  Don’t forget these machines can also make great frozen treats like sorbet and sherbet.

One tool that is a must have for me is my salad spinner (especially with all the recent lettuce and spinach scares).  I use this for salad greens and herbs.  It’s really a great design.  When I was looking for a salad spinner, I found a lot of options, but many of them seemed like they would break in the first week.  One of the designs I came across was the spin wheel with a pull string.  While I found this design amusing and probably a great deal of fun to use, I worried that eventually the string would give out and I would need to purchase a new salad spinner.  The spinner I finally settled on was an Oxo spinner.  This spinner has a great design.  There is a push handle to get the greens moving and a button to stop spinning.  The is also a latch to hold the push handle down when you put the spinner away.  It cost around $20 and I have to say I use it pretty much every day.  (A word to the wise when using spinners, don’t overload them.  If you overload the spinner, your greens will never get dry and your dressing won’t be able to coat the leaves of the lettuce.) 

 I bought this little scoop over at Williams Sonoma.  I absolutely love it!  Granted, I don’t use it much for ice cream, but I use it all the time for cookies.  These little scoops are great to have around.  They make it so much easier to make uniform cookies.  The larger scoops are also great for making muffins and cupcakes, they take the guesswork out out of baking.  I really like the Williams Sonoma scoops for a number of reasons, including their durability.  These aren’t like the flimsy ice cream scoops you see elsewhere, they are made of stainless steel and will withstand use after use.  You won’t have to worry about the metal scraper in the center failing out on you or breaking under the pressure of a really heavy cookie dough.  Granted the price is a little bit more for these scoops, but not having to replace them every couple of months will save you in the long run.   

Let me start by saying while I enjoy this pastry brush there are a few things that I do not like about it.  Let’s start with the positives.  On the plus side these gadgets are incredibly inexpensive, running about $5.00 a brush.  They are also great for many purposes.  They can be washed in the dishwasher, are resistant to flavors and smells, and are easy to store for small spaces (they don’t take up much room).  The silicone “bristles” are resistant to bending (some pastry brushes look like toothbrushes that have been over used after a while) and wear and tear.

On the downside.  I find the “bristles” are quite a bit larger than the normal bristles of a pastry brush.  The size of the bristles makes it difficult to use for more delicate jobs.  I know there are other designs and I may have to pick up a finer “bristled” brush for some of my pastry jobs.  The ”bristles” are also not as sturdy as those of a classic pastry brush.  The silicone nature of the “bristles” makes them very flexible and in a sense flimsy.  The ”bristles” flex under an resistance from the food and have a tendency to flail out.   

Overall, it’s a decent tool.  It’s durable, easy to clean, and small enough to fit in any small space. 

One of the tools I use most frequently in my kitchen is my tapered end wooden rolling pin.  I use to have a marble rolling pin.  Marble pins are suppose to be great for rolling out doughs and pastry, but I never really saw how it worked any better than this tapered end rolling pin.  I love this rolling pin for a number of reasons.  One of the main reasons I love it is that it is very light weight.  I found the marble pin I had was very clunky.  This point also brings me to another reason why I love this little pin, it has no handles.  The handles on my old rolling pins often seemed flimsy and gave me little control over the pin.  My tapered end rolling pin works great, the dough rolls out evenly with minimal pressure. 

The only problem I had with this pin was getting use to flouring it enough to keep doughs from sticking.  Once you start adding flour to the pin before you roll your dough and a couple of times during the rolling process there are no problems.  This is a great little tool and fairly inexpensive, I think I picked mine up for $12.95.   

I bought this pan when I lived in Oregon.  I don’t really have a whole lot of pans, but I do have a few that I absolutely love and this happens to be one of them.  Like my knives, I don’t tend to buy my pans in sets.  I usually buy what I need at the time and tend to spend a little more for a better pan rather than having a lot of little pans I don’t use.  This was my first big stainless steel pan and I would say it made me a believer.  I love stainless steel, granted it doesn’t have the non-stick finish that so many people like, but I find it works great.  I can cook pretty much anything in it.  It heats well, cooks evenly and deglazes like a charm.(And we all know how important that is to good cooking)  It can go from stove to oven with no problems.  The dual handle design makes it easy to transport.  At 5 1/2 qt. it is a great size for making larger dishes and the high walls make it great for braising. 

My husband absolutely hates cereal for breakfast, so I have an arsenal of quick loaves that I make and freeze for his breakfasts.  I bought two Chicago Non-stick loaf pans because most recipes for quick bread are designed to make two loaves at once.  I still find that I could use more.  Often times I spend hours baking breads - usually three different kinds - orange cranberry, banana bread, and pumpkin bread.  That’s a whopping six loaves of bread on a busy day.

These pans are great little pans.  The non-stick finish is great, I still use a spray or parchment on the bottoms of the pans, but nothing ever seems to stick to them.  One of the reasons I purchased these two pans was the sturdiness of the pans, they are not flimsy in any way.  My loaves come out with a nice even brown crust, I have never seen any signs of burning on my breads.  The only thing to remember with these darker pans is you may want to turn the oven down by 25° each time you cook.  I always turn the oven down and the loaves still come out in the allotted time for the recipe. 

I find some of my best kitchen tools are my smallest, most inexpensive ones.  This little bench scraper is one of those.  I absolutely love this little tool.  It use to happen to me all the time, I would make biscuits or some other sticky concoction and I would be cleaning flour bits off my counters for weeks after.  This bench scraper makes quick work of pastry clean up.  I also love the ruler that it has running down the front of it.  The ruler goes up to 5 inches.  I don’t know how often I go to the my kitchen drawer and pull it out to measure things for recipes.  In fact, the other day I was doing a video segment for this site and needed to measure something out to 12×12, I went the drawer and got my trusty old bench scrape.  The edge of the scrape is designed to cut through doughs, I use it when I am making a big batch of pizza dough.  It’s much easier to use a scraper then a knife.  The little wooden handle makes it easier to grip than some of the all metal scrapes you find out there.  All and all, it’s an excellent little tool. 

 Today’s what’s in my kitchen is about the glass canisters I have for baking.  I find it so much easier to have all of my baking ingredients in a row on my countertop, so I am not always running back and for to the pantry.  I bought these canisters because of the twist tops.  I wanted to make sure my baking ingredients would be safe from any moisture and the air.  These have really worked out great for me. The set I currently have is a lot smaller than what I would like to have, but I simply don’t have the counter space for the larger gallon size jars.  Hopefully, in my new kitchen I will be able to move up to the next size.  The only real problem with the small ones is having to refill them frequently.  I can usually bake three batches of breads or cookies and then I have to refill all of my canisters.  But, that truly is the only bad thing I can say about them.  The ones I bought look like the old retro candy jars and I love them.  They look nice enough to leave out in plain view.  They were very inexpensive and have been quite durable. 

 Today’s what’s in my kitchen segment is all about my Le Creuset Dutch Oven.  I have the 6 3/4 Qt. red dutch oven, there it is pictured above.  These little babies can be quite pricey, but I will give you a heads up on where to get them cheaper, try Home Goods/TJ Maxx.  Wow, you think I like the TJ Maxx corporation, well after you get a great deal on one of your favorite kitchen gadgets, you will be a convert too.  Unfortunately, in this case I did not get the great deal this time, but actually found out about it the week after I bought this little beauty.  These retail for $200 or more, but when I saw them at TJ Maxx they were running around $80 - $100 depending on size.  I seriously thought about getting another one at that price.  Granted they are seconds, but will you really notice if the shade of red is slightly off? No, probably not.   

Well, at any rate.  This is pan is an absolute delight if you are a big soup maker, like me.  The pan heats evenly, browns veggies and meats nicely, and is plenty big to create enough food to feed a small army.  It is a beast with the enameled cast-iron design, sometimes it gets quite heavy with a stew in it.  It can move between the stove and the oven for slow cooking meals.  I love making chilis in it.  I find it is also a great pot to make my marinara sauces in, in fact, it will be the pan of choice in tomorrow’s marinara face-off between Rachel and Giada.  

Overall, I can’t think of anything bad to say about it.  It’s a great pan that will last a lifetime with proper care.  So if you are in the market for a dutch oven stroll through TJ Maxx, they get shipments of them on and off throughout the year.