Scrape-O-Matic

Also in the New York Times food section today an item about a beater (a.k.a. “paddle”) attachment that does your bowl scraping for you: the BeaterBlade. This new piece of gadgetry from New Metro Design is evidently meant to compete with the SideSwipe Spatula Mixer Blade that came out earlier this year. Both promise to end the drudgery of scraping down the sides your bowl as you mix. Though I can’t say I’ve used either, I haven’t exactly been swept off my feet by the demo videos, since both paddles seem to miss the spot where most unmixed flour hangs out: the very bottom of the bowl. Getting to that spot is where the lion’s share of the work is in scraping. If I’m going to have to do that bit myself anyway, I can’t say I see a whole lot of value in these things. Also, they’re made of plastic instead of metal, which I definitely don’t dig.