Mini baking machines may be hot for the holidays, but do they make the cut for Santa’s bag?

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Mini baking machines may be hot for the holidays, but do they make the cut for Santa’s bag?

The George Foreman Grill meets the Easy-Bake Oven in the season’s trendiest small kitchen appliances: mini baked-goods makers.

From mini cupcake and cake-pop makers to mini pie and pretzel bakers, these colorful and cute countertop appliances are right on trend with the current “bite-size foods” phenomenon.

They’re tempting as a gift idea for recent grads with small kitchens, harried moms who juggle brownie baking and 14 other responsibilities, and for those who generally don’t like the smell of baked goods wafting from the oven. (Yeah, we don’t know any of those people, either.)

Priced about $15-$40, they’re certainly less expensive than e-somethings and iAnythings. And with the ability to make several baked goods at once, they seem like a great investment for anyone stumped on what to give co-workers or party hostesses. (Basket of mini-pies, maybe? Bags of bite-size muffins? A tin of tiny bundt cakes?)

But how do these machine-baked goods taste? Are they as easy to operate — and clean up — as they lead us to believe?

And does the quality of the goodies surpass the burden of storing yet another small appliance in the kitchen cabinet abyss amid the slow cooker, the panini press and the coffee grinder?

We turned a kitchen into Santa’s bake shop to test six mini baked-goods makers. Here are the results — the good (pies), the burned (cakes) and the downright ugly (pretzels).

Sunbeam Mini Pie Maker

$29.99, Target

Makes 4 mini pies; comes with a dual-sided plastic dough-cutting device and plastic dough-presser.

Instructions: Roll out pie dough and use dough cutter to cut top and bottom crusts. Turn on appliance and wait about 3 minutes for “ready” light to come on. Put bottom crusts in greased well, press with “dough presser” so it takes shape, fill with about 1/2 cup filling, and cover with top crust. Close lid and cook 10 minutes.

Test results: Don’t tell Grandma, but it only took about 20 minutes from the moment we pulled the appliance out of the box to the moment we cut into the hot pies for dessert. (We used store-bought crust and apple pie filling, and this was enough for three mini pies.)

And don’t tell Grandma, but this machine made delicious hot pies with a golden-crisp crust, perfect for a generous single-size dessert serving. On our second use, we made chicken potpies, and they tasted great even reheated at work the next day.

The one problem we encountered was that the dough-pressing tool stuck to the dough when we tried to press it down in the cooker, resulting in a wad of dough instead of a nicely shaped crust. Truth is, the dough presser isn’t entirely necessary because the dough starts to take the right shape as soon as it hits the pan.

Advice: Be sure to take seriously the notes in the instructions about overfilling and cleanup. We didn’t, and on our second use, our potpies were outlined in charred apple pie sludge from previously filling the apple pies too full and not bothering to really clean the appliance before the next use. We ate them anyway. Yuck, we know.

Worth the storage space? Yes.

Rating (out of 5): 41/2

Babycakes Mini Cupcake Maker

$29.99, Bed Bath Beyond

Makes 8 small cupcakes, muffins and even pie-lets. Comes with cupcake-decorating tools and pie-crust cutters.

Instructions: Fill the wells with batter, plug the maker in, close the lid and wait 3-5 minutes for the green “ready” light to come on. Check cupcakes by inserting toothpick in middle, and cook them more or remove.

Test results: After our first batch of chocolate cupcakes, this one was headed for two thumbs-down. Before we started, we read the entire instruction booklet, and — unlike in the instruction books of the other appliances — there was no mention whatsoever of greasing the upper or lower “nonstick” pans. So, against our better baking instincts, we didn’t, and a mess ensued. Cupcake residue had stuck to the insides of the wells of our first eight cupcakes. Again, no instruction to clean or oil between batches, so when we tried to remove the second batch, they stuck to the pan, leaving us half-torn cakes to remove and crunchy bits of stuck-on batter to clean up. After some major scrubbing (a no-no in the instruction booklet), we gave it another shot with muffins, first spraying the pans with Pam. They tasted great and came out perfectly. Hooray for Pam, whoever she is!

Advice: Even if the instruction booklet does not specify to oil the pans, be a rebel. Do it anyway. Buy Pam. You’ll save yourself some major cleanup time.

Worth the storage space? Yes.

Rating (out of 5): 3

Nostalgia Electrics Soft Pretzel Maker

$39.99, J.C. Penney

Makes 4 mini soft pretzels. Pretzel cutter and “pretzel tree” on which to hang them included.

Instructions: Plug in to preheat for 3 minutes. Using store-bought bread or cinnamon-roll dough or homemade pretzel dough, roll it out, cut it into pretzel shapes using the pretzel cutter, transfer pretzel forms to pretzel wells in the baker, close lid, and bake for 3-7 minutes.

Test results: It took us four batches to finally achieve something that looked like a pretzel. On our first try, we used refrigerated pizza-crust dough, and what resulted were burned pieces of toast with alien-face imprints.

We switched to the Auntie Anne’s pretzel-dough kit. Those yielded pretzels that tasted more like pretzels. However, the main problem with this system is the (cheap, cheap) plastic pretzel cookie-cutter device you must use to cut the dough before you bake it. You have to really press down hard for the inside shapes of the pretzel to come out.

Of the 24 or so pretzels we made, only about five looked like pretzels. Most were more like waffles with pretzel outlines in them — which would be fine if this were a waffle maker, but it’s not.

Advice: Bake soft pretzels in the oven, or visit the stand in the mall.

Worth the storage space? No.

Rating (out of 5): 1

Bella Ultimate Brownie Maker

$19.99, Target

Makes 8 small brownies. Comes with a slicing tray.

Instructions: Insert brownie-cutter tray into bottom pan and oil generously. Plug in to preheat, make batter and drop 2 tablespoons in each of the eight compartments. Close lid and cook for 8 minutes. Open lid to cook for 1 more minute, check doneness and cook for 15 more seconds at a time with closed lid, if needed.

Test results: The first thing we thought as we stared at a big bowl of batter was “This is going to take awhile.” Following normal brownie-making protocol, we’d just dump the batter into a pan and bake the whole thing in the oven, take ‘em out, and cut ‘em into whatever size brownies we desired. But this “Ultimate” brownie maker only allows you to bake 8 at a time. And between each cooking, you must remove the slicing tray, clean it and re-oil it. After almost an hour, we’d baked the entire bowl of batter, exerting a lot more effort (and taking much more time) than the old bake-in-the-oven method.

Sure, the petite brownies (about 2 inches by 11/2 inches) were well-cooked and tasty, if you like uniformly cakey brownies.

But why — WHY?! — would you want to just make eight brownies? And if you’re making a whole recipe, why — WHY?! — would you go to all this trouble when you’ve probably got a perfectly good baking pan you can shove in the oven?

Advice: If you’re starting from a standard brownie mix or recipe and truly just want to make 8 or 16 brownies, don’t make the whole mix or you’ll have to throw out a ton of batter.

Worth the storage space? No.

Rating: 2

Sunbeam Donut Maker

$39.99, Best Buy

Makes 5 mini doughnuts.

Instructions: Plug in and make batter while the device preheats and “bake ready” light comes on. Pour or drop batter into greased doughnut-shaped wells, close the lid, and cook for about 6 minutes.

Test results: Mmmmm, hot doughnuts — and without deep-frying. (Almost like giving the gift of health!) We admit that we tried this one using cake batter (first butter pecan, then gingerbread) because we could make it from a box; we were feeling too lazy to make doughnut batter from scratch. As long as we kept the pans well-greased, the cake doughnuts came out easily each time, and there was minimal cleanup afterward.

Unfortunately, they baked unevenly each time. The ones on the left and right were still doughy when the ones on the top and bottom wells were done. Still, they had a nice, round, doughnut-y shape, and they were mostly very edible.

Advice: Be gentle when removing doughnuts; they can be tricky to get out since they’re small and not very deep. Don’t use anything sharp, or you’ll risk puncturing them.

Worth the storage space? Yes.

Rating: 31/2

Bella Fluted Cake Maker

$29.99 on sale, J.C. Penney

Makes 5 mini fluted cakes.

Instructions: Plug in to preheat for 4 to 5 minutes and make cake batter. Drop into oiled wells, close lid, and allow to bake for 4 to 10 minutes or until done. (Continue baking 1 minute at a time until they’re browned.)

Test results: Oh, how we wanted this to work. We love beautiful cakes that come out of the mini fluted pans and look like little roses and cathedrals and mini-bundts. They’re so elegant to give as gifts, so impressive to serve with tea, so much more acceptable to snack on at your desk than alien-face pretzel bread.

It broke our heart, then, when we couldn’t get these cakes to come out quite right. They cooked unevenly around the pan — one would be underdone, another burned on both sides. We tried two kinds of batter from a mix and both cooked unevenly. On a third try, we made from-scratch pumpkin cake batter. Still baked unevenly — they’d get golden on top but burned on the bottom and barely done inside.

Still, the cakes took the shape of the pan really well and were easy to remove without mangling the designs. If you threw some icing over the pretty rose design, no one would see it was burned to a crisp — but that would be evil and Grinch-y.

Advice: If you’re intent on making this work and the cakes are cooking unevenly, try out different cooking times with different batters. According to the instruction booklet, batters with more sugar will brown quicker, and cakes baked after the first batch may bake faster because extra heat has been retained. Maybe you’ll have better luck than we did.

Worth the storage space? Sadly, we have to say no.

Rating: 21/2

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