My Favorite Little Kitchen Tool is Cheap, Small, and Indispensable
I knew I’d written something about bench scrapers before, and I did! As a disability aid! They really are the greatest little tools, but while I love my OXO Bench Scraper, I would use it to corral tiny countertop detritus and cringe, because while my metal bench scraper has never scratched anything, I feel like it WILL at ANY TIME.
The solution, of course, was a plastic bench scraper. Usually marketed as a bowl scraper (as well as a bench scraper) these tools have one straight edge and one curved edge (for scraping bowls, you see) and you can use them to gather up all your crumbs heavy handedly without worrying about scratching your glass top stove or countertops or table. You can use it to scrape stubborn sink gunk and not worry about scratching the stainless steel! You can use a plastic bench scraper so often, I now have two, plus my metal OXO one that does still get used, just not for tidying.
The top scraper came in a package with a silicone baking mat and the bottom one I got at a restaurant supply store so the links in this post are to other, I’m sure perfectly lovely, plastic bench scrapers.
Plastic bench scrapers are cheap, easy to clean and use, and once you have one (or two, or three) you will wonder how you ever lived without it. I’ve been doing a lot of cookie-cutter based, crumbly baking lately, and my plastic bench scrapers have never seen this much use. They corral my mess perfectly, and I cannot recommend them enough.
