Pros: Snap together for easy storage; dishwasher safe; strong plastic
Cons: Too-fine corners; won’t release dough
Rating: 2 out of 5
Review item courtesy of Jardina Communications.
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I had great hopes for the new Cuisipro snap fit cookie cutters. I received a nautical set (sailboat, lighthouse, anchor) and a zoo animal set (hippo, elephant, monkey) for review, and I thought they looked great. Mixed sizes and shapes. They snap together for easy storage. They’re dishwasher safe. They have nice plastic easy-grip handles. They come in fun shapes. I did wonder whether the fine detail on some of the shapes, such as the little monkey’s arm and the hippo’s feet, would get blotted out by cookie spread, but that’s what testing is for.
We decided to try the cutters with a sugar cookie dough. It’s a traditional dough for using cookie cutters with, after all, and it would have a minimal amount of spread.
First of all, I will say that the shapes are cool. The difference in size between the shapes in a set is rather startling—your cookies will range from small to huge in just three shapes—but that rather makes sense since the cutters have to fit inside each other.
I did find that cookie spread eliminated the detail of things such as the hippo’s feet and the monkey’s arm. The hippos almost uniformly looked like big blobs, which was kind of sad.
What I hadn’t thought of ahead of time, however, is the problem of releasing the cookies from the cookie cutters. The pamphlet that came with them advertised “durable plastic releases dough with ease.” I also tried using the cookie cutters both with and without dipping them in flour before using them on the dough. With normal cookie cutters, which have open tops, I’d reach in with a finger and gently press on the dough around the edges, parting it from the cookie cutter. Because of the handles, there’s no way to reach into these and do the same. Unfortunately, I did not find that the cutters released the dough “with ease”, and we ended up with a lot of broken cookies! Sadly that detail is kind of a deal-breaker.
As usual Cuisipro has come up with some innovative new ideas, but unfortunately once in a while (and this is one of those rare times) they miss an important and necessary detail to make those new ideas work just right. I hope they’ll keep improving these and look for ways to fix the above-mentioned problems. For now, however, I wouldn’t really recommend these.
