I'm always baking cakes, cupcakes and cookies. 5 days out of 7 I would say that there's always a delicious smell of baking wafting from my kitchen. I get my love of baking from my mum, who was always baking us a delicious cake or buns when we were little. My mum always used/uses a 'cake tester' to test whether her cakes and buns were/are cooked. My mum's cakes tester is probably 40 years old or more and is still going strong, it's actually just some sort of a plastic coated skewer type stick, but it's obviously made from some kind of heat resistant plastic.

The purpose of a cake tester is to check whether your cake or cupcakes are cooked. You insert the cake tester vertically into the centre of your cake or your cupcakes all the way down to the base, and then instantly withdraw it, if the cake tester comes out clean i.e. with no sticky or gloopy bits of cake batter attached to it then you know that your cake is ready, if the cake tester comes out with bits of uncooked cake mixture on it then you know that your cake or cupcakes need a little more time in the oven.

To be honest I've never ever used a cake tester until very recently when my mum actually bought me this one. I've always just used a strand of dried spaghetti, this works just as well as an actual dedicated cake tester. At the end of the day most cakes testers are just essentially long thin stainless steel metal skewers, so why not just use an actual skewer, or do as I do and improvise and use a strand of dried spaghetti! The reason my mum ended up buying me this cake tester is because she was watching me bake in the kitchen one afternoon and was horrified that I used a strand of spaghetti as a cake tester, she reckoned that the strand of spaghetti could snap and I'd end up with part of an uncooked spaghetti strand in my cake! Now I've lived away from home for probably 15 years now, and I must have baked absolutely thousands of cakes and cupcakes in that time and I've never had a strand of spaghetti snap on me yet!

I have to admit though that I do love this little cake tester, it's quite funky and quirky, although it is essentially just a thin stainless steel pointy stick with a white circular disc on the top saying 'cake tester'. It does it's job and it's easy to clean I just wipe it over with a damp piece of kitchen roll and pop it back in the kitchen drawer. I like that it does have the little circular disc on the top as this makes it easy to spot in my kitchen drawer and this means that I will probably now use this as opposed to reaching for a strand of spaghetti. One of the reasons that I've never bought one myself before now is that I always remember my mum rummaging in her kitchen drawers looking for hers as she could never find it as it wasn't easy to spot in amongst all the other items in the kitchen drawer.

My mum tells me that this was just £1 off Amazon, and that she has also bought my sister one as well - just in case she is using a strand of spaghetti as a cake tester too (she is, or should I say she was!). My mum also tells me that she's bought a further dozen of these to give as stocking fillers at Christmas!!

So in summary; Do you need this - no. Can you live without this - yes. Can you improvise and use something else instead - yes. Will this turn you into Nigella - no. And finally how on earth have I managed to waffle on for nearly 700 words about a £1 cake tester!!! - ???