Hasta La Ideas

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

To save money on our wedding, my then-fiance-now-husband and I decided we would make chocolate suckers for our wedding favors instead of buying a hundred small doodads. Neither of us had worked with candy before, but that didn’t stop us. We headed to a local cake and candy supply store and got all the supplies the nice saleswoman said we would need. We purchased chocolate discs, two candy molds, sucker sticks, candy bags, and headed home.

Making the chocolate suckers was fun and simple. We melted the chocolate discs in the microwave in a pyrex bowl, poured the chocolate into the molds, inserted the sticks, and put the molds into the refrigerator to cool. When the suckers were hardened, we put them in candy bags, tied them with a ribbon and were done. The saleswoman told us if we didn’t have a microwave we could have used a double boiler for melting the chocolate and if we didn’t have a double boiler could just set an aluminum bowl over a pot of water on the stovetop and create one to use when melting the chocolate. But, since we had a microwave, we went the easiest route of all.

Knowing now that melting chocolate is an easy process involving only a bowl in the microwave or a (real or make-shift) double-boiler on the stovetop, I was confused when reader Claw sent me a link to the Babycakes Chocolate Dipper:

It’s a mini-crockpot that keeps melted chocolate warm. You still have to melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler and then transfer the chocolate to the Chocolate Dipper to be able to use it. The one and only time I can imagine using this item is if you are having a chocolate dipping party of some kind … but even if you do have a chocolate dipping party, are you going to have so many chocolate dipping parties that you need a special device? A fondue pot could certainly be a good substitute, and if you don’t have one I’m sure someone in your neighborhood does that you could borrow for the one time that you have the chocolate dipping party. My guess is you could also just use your regular-size crockpot on a low setting to keep chocolate warm.

But, if you’re just working on your own and aren’t having a party, all you need to do is pop the chocolate back into the microwave for a few seconds if it starts to harden. If you’re using a double boiler, you just dip your item straight into the double boiler because the water keeps the chocolate warm.

This seems to me to be one of those items that could be useful once or twice, but otherwise just takes up space. And, since there are so many other ways to achieve the same results, its once or twice usefulness is even suspect.

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