Whack It! Smack It! Teach Those Ingredients A Lesson With The Ultra Hip Adjust-A-Cup!
Written: Feb 10 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great for those who don’t bake or cook often, variety of measurements.
Cons: Requires extra care when cleaning, hard to use with some ingredients.
The Bottom Line: Can’t stand kitchen clutter? Need an all purpose measuring tool? Adjust-A-Cup might just be right for you!
|
|
|
| Freak369's Full Review: Adjust-A-Cup Measuring Cup |
When it comes to saving space in the kitchen I am up for trying almost any product, when I spotted the smaller one cup version of the Adjust A Cup about a year ago at a local kitchenware store I had to try it out. It seemed like it would be the perfect tool to have to measure out smaller things like sugar for cookies [three quarters of a cup] and pretty handy when all the other measuring cups are dirty or have been used for liquids. For less than five bucks I figured it would either be a complete godsend or something that would get banished to the “I could’a sworn this was a great product” cabinet with the waffle maker, coffee bean grinder and other assorted appliances and accessories. Since I liked the one cup version so much I decided to try out the two cup size to see if it too would be a kitchen wizard. After having this around that for a while now I can say that it definitely has a lot of good points to it but make no mistake about it, there are some real drawbacks to it as well. Is this the right measuring tool for you? That’s a case by case sort of thing – if you can live with some of the small design flaws and limitations then by all means, this would be a great addition to any kitchen. At twice the price [almost ten buckaroos] I was hoping it would serve me just as well as it’s little sister. Did it? Well, you’ll just have to keep on reading to find out.
The Adjust A Cup is a nice thing to have around for light job or when other measuring cups are being used but if you do any kind of baking with vegetable shortening, large blocks of butter or other solids this isn’t the best choice for the job. Why not? Well, you won’t be getting a truly accurate measurement since it is nearly impossible to fill the cup without getting air bubbles at the bottom or along the sides. Sure you can pull back on the cylinder a little to give yourself a little extra room but that sort of defeats the purpose of using a measuring tool doesn’t it? If you’ve never seen one of these it is an ingenious and nifty kitchen tool. Measurements for dry ingredients work the best in this and allow you to see the levels in ounces, cups or pints with two cups being the maximum that it will hold. The sizes and measurements are listed on the sides of the outer clear plastic sleeve so it is always easy to read unless you are working with something like melted milk chocolate, chocolate chips or molasses. To give credit where credit is due, this is the best measuring cup for pumpkin pie filling, applesauce and fruit filling since you don’t have to scrape out a cup or fight with a spatula to get all the goodies into the mix.
So how does it work? Well, it’s so simple you might dismiss it as a useless item. Let’s say you are making chocolate chip cookies and need three quarters of a cup each of regular sugar and brown sugar. You have two ways of working this – add the brown sugar first and pack it down then add the regular sugar or add each of them individually. Just pour in the ingredients to the respective fill line and dump it in your bowl or press the bottom of the cylinder to aid in pushing out the ingredient. It doesn’t require a lot of force to advance the sleeve and dump out the ingredients and it is a lot easier than using a standard measuring cup and a spatula to get melted chocolate, peanut butter or wet mixes out. If it were any simpler it would come with a person to do the work for you … get my point? This is also great to have on hand when smaller kids want to help out but they can’t lift flour sacks or measure accurately, fill this puppy up and let them have a field day whacking out the ingredients. Since it is virtually unbreakable [plastic sleeve, metal center] it will take a fair amount of abuse before it needs to be replaced.
Cleaning
This is where I was most worried when it came to whether or not this would cut the mustard. The measurements are stenciled on the outside sleeve so they are prone to the usual scrapes, scratches and marring. It would have been better if the words and numbers were raised but they aren’t so this means that over time some of the information will start to wear off if you use a scrubby pad to clean it. I usually soak this in warm soapy water and use a regular sponge on it then let it air dry. Since I rarely use my dishwasher I can’t say how this stands up to the washing and drying cycles and even though it is listed as dishwasher safe, I’d suggest hand washing it to preserve the stenciling. It does clean up nicely and is pretty sturdy overall but I do give it a little extra care when cleaning it.
One Cup or Two Cup?
Since I mentioned the one cup version I figured I’d compare the two so you could get a feel of the difference between them. The smaller one has more information on it – break downs of teaspoon, tablespoon, cup incriminates, ounces and milliliters. The two cup size only has four sets of increments so while you can measure larger amounts, you are limited to the actual information it is giving you. Both as essentially the same product only one is smaller. If you are considering picking up an Adjust A Cup you might want to stop and think about what you will be using it for, what measurements you make most often [whole cup, half cup etc] and if you are going to be using it to measure out large amounts of ingredients. Some people use the large two cup version to measure out all their dry ingredients, one item on top of another, then just dump the whole thing into the mixer. I was never able to get the hang of how to do that without creating a complete mess so I just measure, dump, repeat. For me both of the sizes are great and let’s face it, you can never have too many measuring tools in the kitchen – especially when the holidays roll around.
The Bottom Line
So far both of these adjustable measuring cups have come in extremely handy when my other cups were being used or were still in the drying rack. Now that I have had them both for a while and know their pros and cons I know when it’s best to grab them and use them or when I need to completely dry out the other measuring cups. For dry items like flour, sugar, oats or brown sugar the larger Adjust A Cup is truly handy but it has a hard time with things like vegetable shortening, thick liquids and dark ingredients. The basic premise of this tool is to help get all of the ingredients out of the cylinder and aid in accurate measurements – sadly that is something that it just can’t do with some type of food. While I really like both of the Adjust A Cup sizes and they both get a lot of use, I wish the letting was raised or coated in some way so that it didn’t require a lot of special care when cleaning and storing it.
As always, thanks for the read!
^V^ Freak ^V^
© 2004 Freak369
Gadgets, gizmos and more …
Misto Gourmet Olive Oil Sprayer
Ateco Parchment Paper
Casabella Grippee Fish Sponge
Norpro Marble Mortar and Pestle
OXO Good Grips Plastic Lemon Reamer
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.