Do you really need it? Cast iron cookie pan

I’m a sucker for kitchen gadgets. I couldn’t live without my mini-frother, my digital meat thermometer, or my muffin whisk (it’s a crazy contraption that looks more like a rug beater but ensures that “just moist batter consistency recipes call for). So when I saw a cast iron cookie pan for sale, I thought, Well I’ve gotta try that out. Did I mention I’m a sucker for sales too?

In my defense, my thought was to use it to make a creamy cheese dish that I’d had in an Italian restaurant. You need a small cast iron pan to do it and I figured this one would work–and it would also make perfectly crisped cookies (cue TV personality voice while you say that). But here’s what happened–I tried the cookie mix that came with the pan, I didn’t expect much with the flavor and I wasn’t disappointed. It tasted like cakey chocolate chip brownies, not anything like a good, chewy cookie. But hey, that’s a mix. With my cookie recipe, it would turn out beautifully, right? I mean, I love my regular-sized cast iron pan.

Well, despite coating the pan with plenty of baking spray, the cookie batter stuck to the pan. Worse, it cooked unevenly leaving the center of the cookie doughy and the outside burnt to a crisp. Sigh. The cast iron cookie pan was in the realm of TV infomercials, not essential gadetry, as I’d hoped. I even burned my hand on the pan when I thought it was cool and of course the pan was still plenty hot 10 minutes after coming out of the oven.

I thought about my gadget fixation while taking an online quiz on what kind of cleaning personality I have on Motherboard. Did my penchant for gizmos mean I’d be destined to be a micro-cleaner, obsessed with ridding my kitchen of spots? Or did I have a closet hoarder habit that manifests itself in the kitchen? Well, I fell squarely into the good-enougher, center-of-the-road category. As far as cleaning goes that means I’m not likely to dust until you can write your name in the specks and when it comes to filling up the dishwasher, I cram it. But what does it mean in the kitchen? I think I need to develop my own version and call it, What kind of meal maker are you?

Here’s my kitchen tweak:

When it comes to cooking are you…

A) A domestic diva! who whips up souffles no problem.

B) A good-enougher who’s willing to take a few shortcuts as long as dinner is still delicious (hello, canned tomatoes!)

C) A cable show candidate who throws in whatever ingredients are handy figuring it will either taste okay or land you a spot on America’s Worst Cooks.

I figure, I’m a good-enougher–with a healthy dose of creative cooking steam mixed in–what about you?