Re-reviewed: The Olivator

The very first review on Cookistry was a product called the Olivator that I reviewed in January, 2010.

Wow, that was a long danged time ago.

The Olivator, made by RSVP, is designed for stuffing semi-hard food items into other tasty food items. I used it to stuff Milky Way candy bar pieces into strawberries, and a spicy goat cheese mixture into cherries.

Funny story about those cherries. Back then I was getting very little traffic on my blog, so tracking visitors was a bit of an obsession. For some reason, I got a visit from the White House - the one in Washington - on that post.

While I wish that the White House Chef was checking out my site for recipes, it was probably an automated visit from a security-based computer because of the name of the recipe. I called them Cherry Bombs. Oopsie. 

Meanwhile, back to the opinions:

So, after four years, I still use the Olivator on occasion, mostly for holidays when I want to make a fancy appetizer. I've also used it to cut out melon pieces and stuff those cores into melons of different colors.

When I first reviewed this, some fold said that you could do the same thing with a pastry bag. Not really. You can pipe soft products with a pastry bag. This doesn't work well at all with soft products. But it excels at stuffing semi-hard substances that you could never pipe.

While it's not an essential piece of hardware, is performs a unique function that I use once in a while.

Who's it for: People who do a lot of fancy presentation, Martha Stewart clones, food bloggers, and other crafty folks.

Pros: Does what it's supposed to do very well. Well-built and solid. Comes apart for cleaning.

Cons: Most people probably don't need something like this, and for occasional use, it might be a tad pricey.

Source: I received this at no cost from a kitchen store in order to do a demo at their site.