Review: Hello Kitty Waffle Maker

I’ve come to the point where whenever I have J-List credit to spend, I try to avoid the bento stuff. It’s not that I don’t want more bento boxes, of course I do, but my storage cabinet has actually reached capacity and I have so many bento boxes that I haven’t used yet, even I had to come to my senses.

Fortunately, there’s a ton of other cool looking stuff to splurge on at J-List, so I decided to get something pricey and different this time just to see if it was anything like the pictures.

If you haven’t seen this item while browsing before, yes, it’s a freaking Hello Kitty Waffle Iron. O. M. G., right? When I first saw the picture, I didn’t even think about the fact that the waffle on the front was completely white. After a bit of research, I found out that this was actually what’s called a “moffle” or a mochi waffle. I haven’t had the chance to go buy some mochi blocks to try it yet, so I just decided to make regular waffles. The only problem is, this is the first waffle iron I’ve ever owned in my life.

Hilarity to ensue after the cut.

This past weekend while I cussed like a sailor at my new toy, I began thinking back about 5 years to an Easter party at my aunty’s house. I’d been on Weight Watchers for a bit and I brought this fancy pants artichoke dip that was pretty easy to make and pretty low fat. While we were there, someone made some kind of comment about how… I forget the word used, but basically, it was “interesting” that I was actually cooking things. I wasn’t really sure where the heck I got this stupid Can’t-Cook-For-Beans reputation, but it spanned both sides of the family.

One Christmas, another aunty gifted food prep items to me and my brother. He got this cool meat marinating tupperware thing (the one with the square bumps) and I got this dish that could cook hamburger fast. At the time, I think I was going to start college, so the impression I got was that it was because I’d be living on Hamburger Helper. It was a great gift, but thinking back, I don’t know how I got this reputation.

Not that it isn’t true, though. As many of you know, I’m a disaster when it comes to cooking. Not to say that the food you’ll find in my book doesn’t taste good because I wouldn’t make people eat things that don’t taste good, but my methods are just so wrought with trouble that it really is amazing that I can make something edible. This is why having a cookbook with my name on it is such a nice accomplishment for me. It’s taken me a lot more effort to get to this point than a lot of people probably think. And just when I’d thought that I was all that, this waffle iron came into my life to bring me back to my Kitchen Wrecker roots.

This is my second waffle. I did not take a photo of my first waffle because it wasn’t even a waffle. I didn’t let it heat enough and the batter simply adhered to the iron like Super Glue on crack. I opened it up and the damn thing split in half, leaving me with mushy batter stuck to both sides.

I also got batter all over my cooktop, causing a nice burnt waffle smell to fill our house. I had lost the instructions sheet, which was written completely in Japanese, but had photos to assist me, so I didn’t know that I was only supposed to fill the batter up to the inner kitty line. This caused batter to just keep oozing and oozing and oozing out of the side. Paper towel after paper towel was used trying to scoop it off before it hit the stove, but eventually I gave up and just let the stupid thing ooze. Sadly, as I already mentioned, I couldn’t even get it out of the iron.

I can tell you first hand that cleaning mushy waffle out of this damn iron is about as fun as cleaning your entire kitchen floor with a toothbrush. I actually had to get a coffee straw to scrape batter out of some of the small little areas.

The second waffle was okay, but really soft, so I didn’t cook it enough. Time for Take 3!

Right around now, Mr. Pikko began to feel sorry for me and started looking up how to use a waffle iron. He found something that suggested using cooking spray so that it wouldn’t stick. While the waffle did come out, she looked like I’d thrown her into a fire instead of a waffle iron. After two waffles that looked something like this, I went back to no Pam and found instructions on using a cast iron waffle iron and decided I hadn’t let the iron get hot enough.

Uh oh… Yeah, as you can see, I went a little too far on the heating part. It looks like a dragon came by and torched her. Still, the shape was great and the back looked okay, so I felt like I was getting somewhere.

See? Back looks great! Just don’t turn it over or eat it and I’m set.

Oh ho ho! Real progress here! Basically, you fill the inner area of the waffle iron and then the outer ring catches the excess batter. You then cut/break off the outside to get a nice clean looking waffle. At this point I only had enough batter for one more try, so this was it. Do or die!

EUREKA!!!!

Yes, this is my very last waffle and it turned out nearly perfect. I have no idea what I did right except get the heat exactly right and I have no idea if I can get it again, but damn I was happy with that result. Mr. Pikko gave me a yay and for his help, I let him eat this nice pretty one. I’d have given it to Baby Girl but she already had one because she was so impatient, she couldn’t wait for Mommy to finally get one right.

My cooking issues aside, this last waffle proves that it does work as advertised, but you’ll probably need to do some experimentation before you can get it to cook right. The waffles turn out to be about 4″ wide, so they’re a decent size. The two sides come apart when you angle it a certain way, making for easier cleaning. At the end of the handle is a little metal loop that you can use to keep the two sides together. A little groove is in the other handle and the loop fits right into it, which is convenient.

That being said, this waffle iron is really old school. There’s another Hello Kitty Waffle Maker available on Amazon that makes four different designs of waffles in one crack and it’s also an electric one that probably means less stress and faster cooking for little kids. I don’t know if I’d buy one of those while already owning something like this, especially since it’s kind of a girl only meal maker. I’ll probably look into buying a multi-gender cute waffle maker and stick to this one when I need to cater to the little girl in the family.

The item costs a whopping $45 from J-List, so unless it’s raining money, you have J-List affiliate commission to spend, or are a Hello Kitty fiend, this is probably something you should skip. If you cook like me, definitely stick to buying Eggo’s at the market.

To make this post bento-related, here’s my quickie lunch for today:

I actually made three bentos today, since today is the first day of Baby Girl’s summer program. She requested spam musubi, so I made her one and then packed leftovers from yesterday for Mr. Pikko. We had rabbit for the first time and it tasted pretty good, but I cooked it too long while browning it and the dang thing was really tough. I only photographed my lunch because I made us late, but my lunch has a chicken sandwich, a cocktail tomato, sweet potato slices, and cherries. I used these new sandwich thins that I saw at Costco.