I love shiny new kitchen appliances, so when my Mother-In-Law offered me her old toaster I jumped at the chance. If it was better than mine I would swap it over, if it was rubbish I could put it with the camping stuff. It was a win, win situation.

It did not take long till the toaster was in my hands, first impressions were good, and I was already planning on sending the Breville toaster camping and giving the shiny new looking Kenwood TTM406 pride of place on my kitchen work tops to await the weekend when its toasting abilities would be put to the test.

The Kenwood TTM406 really is a thing of beauty, with its high shine stainless steel finish and black, inset high rise levers. I was smitten, all it had to do was cook my Saturday morning tea cake and we would be toasting off in to the sunset.

I sliced my tea cake in half and slotted it into the nice wide toasting slots, I set the browning dial to 3, going for the middle temperature and waited, and waited, and waited. This really was taking a long time, after 2 minutes I stuck my head over the toaster and observed that my teacake was thoroughly cooked so I decided to halt proceedings by pressing the cancel button. The toaster stopped toasting and made the springing noise to indicate my teacake was free, but alas there was no sign of the teacake so I thought now would be a great time to test out the Hi Rise function, I pushed the lever up, in theory I should now see my teacake and be able to grab it, but no I still had to prise the teacake out with my fingers, making the ooh ooh hot noises that are necessary in this situation. My teacake was reasonable toasted; the edges had caught a little. Due to the fluffing around to eject my teacake from the toaster the butter would not melt and my teacake was cold, not a satisfactory Saturday breakfast.

Later in the day my Husband and Daughter, who both had colds at the time, requested chicken soup and toast. Excellent I thought, another chance to test the toaster and put the teacake dramas of the morning behind me. I slotted bread into all 4 toasting slots and set the browning control to 2. Then the waiting began, again it was very slow. After 3 minutes the toast in one side popped up, in the other side it was missing. I removed the toast and could not help observing the rather dried out nature of the toast, it was very crisp and crunchy and looked no less toasted for being done on a lower setting. I then set about freeing the toast from the other side, the Hi Rise mechanism only seemed to bend the toast so once again fingers were required to free the toast, except this time I burnt my finger and the toast was jettisoned across the kitchen. The Automatic Bread Centering System that the Kenwood boasts of in its specifications seems a bit useless as the bread and the teacake both got lost in the vast toasting slots.

Feeling rather cross with the Kenwood toaster I spoke to my Mother-In-Law to enquire if she had any difficulties with it. She said no and that she had only used it once or twice. I could see why she wanted to get rid of such a good looking machine; it is useless and speeding up the process of toasting.

My Breville toaster is now sat back in its place; I have even emptied the crumb tray and buffed up its stainless steel. The Kenwood is being banished to my Step-Sons flat where hopefully he will have better luck with it.

In conclusion looks can be deceiving; the Kenwood TTM406 is a beautifully styled piece of kitchen ware and looks fantastic sat in front of my black tiles but that is where the good stuff ends. The Hi Rise is useless, the toasting slots are just too big, teacakes and crumpets get lost in there. The browning setting only seems to have one setting which is desiccated toast, I never used defrost or reheat settings in the short time I was acquainted with this toaster. The crumb tray is easy to remove and clean and the cord storage under the toaster is a good idea. The toaster takes forever to toast bread and even then doesn't get it right. It gets 1 DooYoo star from me as it looks good.

My Mother-In-Law paid £24.00 for the toaster in a half price sale and it can currently be found on amazon.co.uk for £34.47 with free delivery.

Thank you for reading.