Shake it like a flour sifter.

I recently decided to make my first homemade carrot cake. The recipe that I decided to try required a flour sifter. In the past, I have just used my fine mesh strainer which worked fine, but I wanted to actually buy a flour sifter this time. I bake enough to justify the purchase, so off I went on my quest for the world’s greatest flour sifter. My first inclination was to just get a standard ol run of the mill sifter. I picked up the most basic one I saw, at an unnamed retailer, and looked at the price. Then looked back to the sifter. Then back to the price. My first thought? “Well, this doesn’t make any sense!” It was almost $10 and looked like it would rust and/or fall apart after one use. Mind you, $10 doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but I am opposed to essentially throwing $10 in the trash. I went to two other retailers and found the same thing. I went home and thought to myself, this is crazy. I thought back to my Kitchenware buying days and remembered the OXO sifter that we had brought into the Kmart stores a couple of years back. I looked it up online and found excellent reviews. Eureka! I went on Amazon, ordered it (for $12.99) and was so excited when I saw the box on my front porch.

Some fun facts about this handy kitchen tool: It has measure marks on the inside for easy measuring of your dry ingredients. It has a cover for the bottom AND the top! Huge, right? No more flour slipping out while you are measuring. No more mess in your cabinets when you don’t get every speck of flour out. Love it! Ok, best feature ever is…. the way you sift. No crank. No handle to squeeze until you feel like you have permanently damaged your wrist. Nope. You just shake it gently from side to side with one hand. I just want to point out one more time, this was marginally more expensive than the original one I looked at with about 10 times the benefit. Absolutely a best buy.

FYI-It is also available at Bed Bath and Beyond ($12.99), Sur La Table ($14.00), Target ($12.99).

Happy Sifting Everyone!!