Next time you are bringing lunch to work, you can bring along this amazing portable hand-held toaster. Just this Wednesday, the Telegraph had an article explaining that the device is in its preliminary stages and should be available in shops in Britain at the end of the year. The concept was created by Korean designer Kim Been.

What appears to be a ceramic cake slice, is actually a device that spreads heat created thanks to nanotechnology. You know when the bread is toasted because heat-sensitive illustrations of vines and butterflies appear and multiply as the bread becomes browner. It takes two to three minutes to toast the bread. The only setback is that only one side can be toasted at a time.

This portable ceramic bread iron will be perfect for campers. As Daily Mail states, "You need never burn your toast in the office canteen again thanks to the invention of the world's first portable toaster." This portable device actually contains highly-durable CarbonNano tubes that will not over-heat and will protect users from any skin burns. The cost of this device has not been announced. Depending on when it comes out, this could be a great gift for the holiday season.

You're going to think that I have toasters on the brain, since it was just a few weeks ago that I posted about the toaster concept that would enable you to leave messages on your toast. But I was just glancing at the New York Times and noticed in the lower right hand corner of the screen, where they often advertise a branded product from the NYT, that they are now selling toasters that have the ability to mark you toast with the 'T' from the Times. It's certainly a fun literary way to decorate your morning meal.

Still only existing in concept, this whiteboard/toaster could become the wave of the breakfast future someday soon. Need to leave a note for your partner, but you leave for work before they do? Just scrawl it on the toaster. If they don't see that note, then they'll surely notice it when it appears on their toast (provided they aren't following a low carb diet). I do see a couple flaws in the plan though, like the fact that the writing surface seems awful close to where the heating element would be. So you'd have to wait quite a while between toasts to write a message if you wanted to avoid burning your hand.

This isn't the first time that someone has designed a toaster that leaves an imprint on the toast. This very pink and white Hello Kitty toaster creates toast that has Kitty's image baked in and has the added bonus of being available now.

Thanks KF!

The simplest thing to make for breakfast (not including cereal, since there's no real "cooking" there), is toast. Even if you're using plain old Wonder white, slipping it into a toaster, letting it bronze, then watching it pop out onto a plate, a toaster makes breakfast even the tiniest bit more special.

But! Now it gets even better with fancy toasters. Forget about the silver Oster that's sitting on your counter. Manufacturers and kitchen product designers are getting into toasters, with everything from the design on the outside, to accessories that allow you to "tattoo" your toast, to a concept toaster that's made of glass. Click through on each toaster to see what it's about.

We seem to have an odd fascination with toast here at Slashfood, not the browned bread itself, but how people make the somewhat mundane morning meal into something fun. I just came across the Totenkopf Toaster, which imprints a skull and crossbones onto your toast! Sure sure, skulls were a big thing last season in fashion, showing up on everything from rhinestone-bedecked accessories to imprinted on scarves, but that's fashion. And that was also last season. Skulls on food? It kind of makes me think of....poison.

The toaster is available from a German site, so I'm not exactly sure what all the specs are, but at the very least, I do know it costs 32.95EUR.

[via: TasteSpotting]

I have a confession to make. I don't own a toaster. It's not that I don't like toast, mind you. If I were to own one, it would probably be a chrome number with a decidedly retro feel. But only because the futuristic one pictured here may not be for sale. Not to mention that if it were available, I could neither justify nor afford the price.

Glide, as British designer George Watson calls his toaster, just won a contest called Ceramics for Breakfast over at designboom. As he puts it the bone-china device "brings life and joy to a stagnant domestic appliance." Not only that but you don't have to worry about electrocution, since there's never a need to stick a fork inside to grab your toast.

[via Random Good Stuff]

It may not be available just yet, but you can put our names on the list for the ROLLERtoaster when it hits the market. It is definitely the toaster of the future. Sleek and compact, the toaster was designed by Jaren Goh of Singapore and won a 2006 Red Dot Design Award for innovation. Goh was inspired by the change of televisions from large and bulky boxes to streamlined flat-panels which retained all the functionality of the larger unit in a much more compact product. He applied that to a common appliance,the toaster, and the ROLLERtoaster was born. Slices of bread are "fed" into one side of the machine and are rolled through, fully toasted, to the other side where your plate awaits. The only potential problem is that it doesn't look like it will be able to handle bagels easily. Then again, neither do a lot of other toasters, so perhaps it's not as big a problem as one might think.

We love toast here at Slashfood, but we think that toast is a little more fun when you can customize it. We're not referring to whether you like your toast light or dark, with butter or with Nutella, but to actually using a design for the toast itself. So far, we have see snakes on toast, pop art on toast, love notes on toast and Disney characters. None of those can top the Zuse Toast Printer, though. This wall-mounted toaster can burn - by which we mean toast - any 12x12 px image onto your toast using "a technology similar to early matrix printers," working line by line until the image has been reproduced. The toaster comes with some images already uploaded, but it sounds as though you would be able to add your own to the image inventory, too.

I have no idea what that little cube guy under the toaster is supposed to be, but I can think of at least a few designs that would make my morning toast a little more interesting.

[via SciFi Tech]

A bagel lover can spend days, even weeks, trying to find a toaster that will comfortably fit extra-wide bagel slices. With most toasters, you end up having to stuff a bagel half in a too-small slot, which inevitably results in a bagel that is burned on one side. And that's all after you contend with those plastic "bagel slicers" that squish the bagel more effectively than they cleave it. The Westinghouse ToasterSlicer both toast and slices - and it is designed specifically for bagels.

The bagel is loaded whole into the slot at the back and, after pushing the machine's "slice" button and closing the slot, the bagel pops out fully toasted (and sliced!) from the other end after a few minutes. It can also toast regular bread, but it is more of a single-purpose gadget. But if you eat a lot of bagels, it is a gadget that would certainly come in handy! It's $43 at Overstock.com.

Sometimes, food is art, but in this case, art is food. This giant toaster mosaic measures 16.5x15-feet and is made of 2,500 pieces of toast. Each piece of bread was toasted to a precise color of doneness to create the depth and shading in the picture. It took the Swedish artists, as well as some friends who assisted with the toasting, several days to put together the image. The piece is not on permanent display at the Modern Art Museum of Buenos Aires, where it was one of the museum's most popular pieces when it made its debut.

Butter and jam are probably prohibited in the room with the exhibition.

[via Supersized Meals]

I always considered beans on toast to be an easy, but satisfying meal to make. I mean, you open a tin of beans, warm them up in the microwave (or on the stove, if you want to be fancy) while you toast a slice of bread and then spoon some beans onto the toast. I wasn't one for adding butter to the toast, too, but that is certainly a popular option. The point is that beans on toast is a two-component meal and it looks like two was one too many for Heinz, since they have compacted it into a pre-made frozen food, much like a bean-filled pop tart.  It's currently being tested in New Zealand and, if it enjoys success there, it will be treated to a wider release.

Somehow, I think I'll still be able to cobble together this dish on my own, but I suppose if you're really in a hurry....

Speaking of the cost effectiveness of kitchen gadgets, what do you think that your most and least used appliances/tools are? I know that I use my ice cream maker quite often, though it was voted as the least cost-effective appliance. On a near-daily basis, I use my espresso machine and my oven, and I use my toaster and blender less frequently. My stand mixer gets a good amount of use, too. I'm not going to work out the exact cost per use, but I think that these have all paid for themselves.

In terms of least used items, my waffle iron only makes occasional appearances in my kitchen, but I got such a good deal on it that it could be considered "cost effective" even if I only used it twice. My slow cooker is an appliance that I want to use more often than I actually do, as well. Fortunately, I don't think I have anything that I have never used. I'm sure that that is more indicative of the fact that I cook a lot than the potential usefulness of the gadget.

I'm willing to bet that sometimes the least used things in the kitchen are some of the least expensive, like my waffle iron. Things that were expensive tend to motivate people, myself included, to use them in an attempt to justify the cost. If it seemed like too good a deal to pass up at the time, you probably didn't buy it because you actually needed it, like that 6th unusually shaped whisk or yet another cheese grater that is now collecting dust at the back of the pantry.

I came across this photo by Olivander on Flickr's close shots pool the other night. 

You may have guessed by now that it's not some sort of new food-irradiation gizmo. That is, if you're the type of person who reads headlines. This electric inferno is the last thing your bread sees before it becomes, well, toast. When will this senseless destruction of gluten-based products end?!?   

[photo: Flickr]

How many times have you come across a neat looking gadget or seemingly useful appliance at the store and bought it, thinking that it would be useful? Maybe you rationalized your purchase by thinking , I always wanted to make my own ice cream, or perhaps even something like, the toaster on the TV show I watched last night looked just like this one and it made perfect toast! Not all kitchen gadgets are as costly, or as cost effective, as they sound. Pricegrabber.co.uk did a study of the cost-effectiveness of 30 household items, based on a survey of 1,500 UK shoppers that asked about how often they had used the items in the past year.

The least cost effective item was an ice cream maker, costing £19.48 ($35) per use! Clearly, nothing that is used only once or twice is a very cost effective item. Kitchen gadgets that were cost effective were tea kettles, averaging 5p (10¢) per use, and toasters, which ran about 18p (32¢).

 

 

This toaster seems like it could lead to problems. Sure, the first couple of days you may get a kick out of buttering toast that says:  "I Love You." But what about Day 18? What if you're not particularly happy with your lover and you have to make them a piece of toast? And what happens if you accidentally burn the toast? Perhaps your lover will get suspicious if he or she gets a piece of blackened toast that says "I Love You."  I wouldn't touch this toaster, but I'm sure someone is ordering it right now. It's about $53 via Gadgets.co.uk.