I was recently sent this Nostalgia Electrics Pop Up Hot Dog Toaster by the people at Find Me A Gift. I was pretty excited to get it as I just love, LOVE hotdogs, and this promised that making hotdogs could be as simple as making toast!
I loved the color and sleek appearance of the machine. Vintage styling with the promise of cooking two hotdogs and toasting their buns at the same time. Who could ask for anything more. I had high hopes.
You put the hotdogs themselves into the little basket in the centre, which is made for them, and then the buns go into the receptacles at the sides. Easy peasy, right?
After trying it out with numerous hotdogs and a variety of buns, I came to the conclusion that this machine was clearly not manufactured with the products we have available here in the UK in mind. Our weiners are not quite as thick as the North American ones, and the ones that are thicker, are too big.
One of my hotdogs fell almost all the way through the basket, but the other one did toast quite nicely.
It's the buns that are the problem. We just do not have hotdog buns available in this country that suit the size of the holes for the toasting of buns. I tried several different kids. The Warburton's ones which were specifically called "Hot Dog Buns," and those which are called finger buns which are somewhat smaller. I even tried smashing the buns down so that they were thinner. The picture above are my results each and every time. Not good to say the least. I ended up toasting them in a skillet.
Which worked fine, but was not the idea of this exercise. I was supposed to be able to toast them in the toaster.
My findings were thus . . . it is just not suited to use here in the UK, unless there are some hotdogs and buns out there that I am not aware of that fit properly . . . and there might be. I am just saying that this didn't exactly work for me the way I had hoped it would. And I must be honest with you. I could not be otherwise.
So I hope that the Find Me a Gift people are not too disappointed in me. This is in no means a reflection on them or on their service. I have always been really happy with everything else I have ever received from them, and with their service. Everything has always arrived in a timely manner, and been well packaged. They have always given good value for money spent. They have a huge array of items on their site to suit every taste and occasion and all are reasonably priced. Many thanks to Emma and the people at Find Me a Gift for sending this along. I just wish I had better things to say about it. I really did want to like this. Truly.
Note: They actually sent me two of these. The button broke on the first one the first time I used it, and so they sent me a second one. Nobody can say they don't try hard!
