I bought this for my daughter's birthday as she loves baking and she had kept going on and on about having one. We loved the fact it was pink, bonus points all round for that one. This is where the bonus points stop though.

It is very easy to use, being small it doesn't take up very much room at all, and being a very pretty shade of pink, even if it did who can get annoyed at something pink? You plug it in, wait for the light to come on and you are ready to rock and roll. After making the desired mixture, we excitedly opened the lid, tipped in the correct amount, closed the lid and waited. After roughly 8 mins or so, the light let us know they should be ready, we opened the lid and marvelled at the cup cake sight before us. Before I continue, I must warn you that opening the lid was a bit of a task, firstly it gets quite hot and because the lip to open it only juts out a little way, when you touch this (again very hot) and lift, the steam from inside burns your fingers, major flaw in the design there. Open gloves are a necessity with this one.

Once the lid is open (on the first try) the cup cakes came out fairly easy, it is easy to clean, a quick wipe over with a damp cloth, dry with a tea towel and ready for cup cakes take two. Again we waited the desired time, opened the lid with oven gloves, but unfortunately these cakes were quite attached to their nice home and didn't want to come out. They were perfectly cooked but after scraping them out with a spoon, we cleaned, made sure they were properly dry and clean and tried again....same outcome. For some reason we now can't get the cup cakes to actually come out of the holes.

Apart from this there are a few other problems with it. You can only make 7 at a time, seems like a weird number to make cakes for. It's not an even number, so someone is either going without one or a favourite child is getting an extra one. They also tasted a bit strange, I have made cup cakes in the oven 12 at a time for years, and made two batches of mixture, one for me to use in the oven and one for my daughter to use in her cup cake maker. Mine turned out fine; hers unfortunately seemed to taste more like Yorkshire Pudding, nice but slightly odd in a cup cake.
It is still used occasionally, but in general we normally plump for using the oven, as you get more, they are bigger, easier to remove and don't taste like an accompaniment for a roast dinner.