Cooking is an open-ended, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure. You can toss practically anything into a pan, apply some heat, and produce something edible. Baking, however, requires much more precision. In many cases, getting it wrong by just a teaspoon can ruin an entire recipe. So, as with anything else that’s subject to human error, it’s usually best to leave baking (or at least the measurement aspect of it) to a machine — like the PantryChic automatic dispenser.
Freshly launched on Kickstarter, PantryChic is a clever combination of a food-storage system and high-precision ingredient dispenser. Using a digital control panel on the device’s face, you can easily specify an exact amount of a given dry ingredient listed in your recipe and have it deposited directly into your mixing bowl. Even if you enter in imprecise (but still widely used) volume measurements directly from a recipe, PantryChic will instantaneously convert them to more precise weight measurements before dispensing. The idea is that, with this higher degree of accuracy, your baked goods will turn out more consistent from batch to batch.
In addition to more precision, PantryChic also promises to keep your kitchen more organized and clean. The machine uses a system of swappable airtight canisters, so not only does it double as a stackable storage system, it also eliminates the need to scoop ingredients out of containers with a measuring cup. Anything that reduces the likelihood that you’ll spill flour all over the countertop is a winner in our book.
The product is just a prototype at this point, but PantryChic’s creators have recently turned to Kickstarter to raise funds for a production run. If you back the project now you can lock one down for a pledge of about $200. At that price, it’s not likely to dethrone measuring cups and become the de-facto standard for baking anytime soon, but depending on how bad your last batch of cookies was, it may very well be worth the investment.
