10 Kitchen Items I Wished I’d Never Bought (or Been Gifted):

 (in case anyone wanted to know)

1. Bread maker. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the idea of a bread maker, ideally one that came with a country kitchen and an Aga. The reality you get, however, is an uninspiring beige loaf with a great big hole underneath. Nil pois.

2. Egg poacher. I mean those little plastic egg-shaped pods you crack an egg in and put in the microwave. What you get is closer to a coddled egg that tastes like damp washing smells. You can apply this assessment to most microwave assisted innovations.

3. Sabre cutlery. Despite Sabre being a renowned good-quality cutlery brand, sold in all the posh shops, have you actually seen the size of them in real life? The butter knives are adorable yet perfectly functional but the cutlery set is something out of Hagrid’s hut. A shocking discovery of a self-gifted wedding present.

4. Le Creuset heart form mini casserole pots. I would also include here all novelty kitchen utensils. These look great, especially for Valentine’s, but decanting is a bitch and honestly, the functionality (and thus the whole point of investing in Le Creuset) goes out the window.

5. Silicone pastry brush. My mum had one with proper bristles that worked like a dream but later in life shed all over our unbaked biscuits at Christmas time. When it came to my first pastry brush purchase, I wanted to avoid this by buying a floppy silicone version. Honestly, when it comes to applying pastry washes, it performs better as a spoon.

6. Metal flan tin. Good heat distribution, non-stick surface, cheap to buy. But, like most flan tins, it has a raised spherical centre that makes removing said flan or cutting out slices almost impossible. I just don’t get it.

7. Swiss roll tin. I hear you, in my galley kitchen, I absolutely did not have space for something so random. However, I saw Skye McAlpine’s yule log recipe in her The Christmas Companion* (see pp. 215-217) and instantly fell in love. The tin was totally inappropriate for the task at hand, despite what Amazon said. See details of the car crash in the appendix below.

8. Salt grater. I bought these beautiful rocks of pink himalayan salt to support my kitchen and living room’s pink and green aesthetic. The salt is beautiful; using the salt is horrible. The little grater intended to apply the salt is messy and makes me shudder whenever I run it along one of the rocks. Not to be recommended for use at the dinner table.

9. Small pestle and mortar. I’m complaining more about its size than anything else. A pestle and mortar looks impressive on any countertop but they only make sense if they’re large. Sure, small ones work well enough if you want to bash together a few spices, but anything more than that, such as making pastes and pestos, and you’ll find most of the finished concoction everywhere but in the vessel.

10. Bamboo chopping boards. I hate chopping boards constructed from almost any other material. Unlike plastic, marble or (she shudders) glass, bamboo and wooden boards don’t make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck as soon as the knife makes contact with it. The downside? Bamboo may be the cheaper option to wood (according to Amazon, anyway) but chunks of it will slowly fall away over time, especially if you’re lazy, like me, and whack it into the dishwasher after use. I’m not joking when I say that for months I’ve been chopping veg on what looks like pieces of driftwood.

Appendix.: 

The Swiss roll tin arrived square. As it turns out, the ‘cake’ used for the yule log needed to be rectangular. I made it nonetheless and due to the incorrect dimensions, it wouldn’t hold enough filling which then spilled out upon rolling. I tried to refill and re-roll, causing the pastry to get too wet and split, leaving me with only ⅔ of the original chocolate ‘cake’. I just about managed to fill it again and roll it on itself once. To hide the mistake, I slathered it with ganache until it looked ‘log-like’ and comprised about 50% of the finished product.

*McAlpine, Skye, A Christmas Companion: Recipes, crafts and inspiration for a magical festive season (London: Bloomsbury, 2025).