These make cooking even more of a pleasure (Salter 1060 Mix And Measure Electronic Kitchen Scale)

Member Name: sakura8

Product:	Salter 1060 Mix And Measure Electronic Kitchen Scale
Date:	23/02/09 (38 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very large display panel, large bowl included, can measure liquids

Disadvantages: None

I absolutely love cooking and I think about food for about two thirds of my day. My main passion is baking and that involves accurately weighing the ingredients to get perfect results. We had two sets of scales in the house and both were useless. The electronic set had run out of batteries and was rubbish anyway (Those were the Anthony Worrall Thompson ones that I have also reviewed) and a mechanical set which you spin round to get the line back to zero, so measuring anything accurately was very hit and miss. So I was getting pretty fed up with these awful scales and cooking was becoming more of a chore and I didn't feel confident that anything I'd made would turn out right.

So we invested in the new Salter 1060 Mix and Measures Kitchen Scales. They are quite expensive at £40, but if you enjoy cooking as much as I do, then that is a small price to pay for good quality. It's like an artist have the best brushes he can buy to paint a masterpiece.

They are absolutely perfect for baking, as they come with a huge stainless steel bowl, which has a 2.5 litre capacity. You can easily weigh and mix all your cake ingredients in the bowl, as you just need to press the zero button after weighing each ingredient. You can also switch between grams, ounces, ml and fluid ounces, which is great if your cake has liquid ingredients.

It has a bright blue backlit LCD display which is incredibly easy to read as the numbers are 2cm tall (Yes I did measure them!) and as the display panel is at the front of the scales, it isn't at all obscured by the large bowl.

The scales are quite small but the bowl is very large, so storing might be a problem for some people. However, they have designed the bowl so that is fits over the scales when it's turned upside down, so that does save some cupboard space. The scales are shaped so that the bowl sits very neatly on top, but you could use any bowl or just put your items directly onto the scales.

These scales take 3 x AA batteries, which are included when you buy the scales. I think that the type of batteries that you need to power scales is an important feature, as you don't want them to suddenly run out and not have any at hand to replace them. AA batteries are easily obtainable and if you've got rechargeable ones then that's even better. To conserve battery life, the scales have an auto switch off function, which is just under a minute when the scales are at zero and just under 3 minutes when the scales show the same weight (Yes I did time this! I had to test them properly!).

The scales can weigh up to 10 kg / 22 lb which is twice the capacity of most other scales. This is great if you're cooking in batches and need to weigh a lot of things.

As soon as we got these scales I was dying to try them out, which my fiancé thought was a little weird! But he didn't mind when I dashed into the kitchen and made delicious Chocolate Cupcakes! I absolutely love these scales and baking is now a joy again. They are so accurate compared to the mechanical set - when I measured out some flour in both sets the difference was about 2oz! So I'm much more confident that I will get perfect results every time, just like Uncle Ben.

Summary: Worth every penny.