The Love Tool: Claire Fountain's Plain Round Cutters
Claire Fountain, she of "sexy vengeance"
The Chef: Claire Fountain of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is a baker, writer, chef, and founder of For the Taste of It. In her own words, she spends her time “supporting local agriculture and sustainable food, and promoting conscious consumption with sexy vengeance.”
The Love Tool: I have 12 little children in my favorite tool tin, the 12-piece Plain Round Cutters set by Ateco.
Where You First Fell For It, And Why?: I picked them up on a whim in my early teens when I was in my Biscuit Obsession phase, which never really ended. I picked the tin over a traditional biscuit cutter, and I fell in love when I figured out the multitude of ways I could put these perfect circle-making cutters to use. They’re easy to use for so many tasks and they keep everything looking perfectly neat and round.
Claire Fountain's beloved Plain Round Cutters
How Do You Use The Tool?: For cookie doughs, cheese wafer dough, biscuits, scones, cutting the circles of dough for tiny tartlettes, making pie crust and empanada dough. I also use them to cut a hole in the bread for an “egg in the hole” breakfast, turn sheet cakes into rounds, brownies into rounds, Jello into rounds, cheesecakes into rounds…you get the picture. You can cut practically anything into 12 sizes of perfect circles. Brilliant!
Interesting Factoid: They come plain or with a little scalloped edge, but the plain ones are more versatile. You can use the smallest one to cut the middle out of a cupcake if you want to fill it with something, though the smallest one does not make a decent ring. I once thought about making a bikini top for a costume, and the largest circle was going to be my template for making the top. But thank God I’m in pastry and not fashion, since my sewing skills needed help and I ended up with no costume.
Do You Use It For Anything Besides Cooking?: I think the above answer covers this, though in general I like to keep my kitchen tools in the kitchen.
Great ideas! I didn’t think of using them for fruit jells, brownies, and things like that! Will have to pull my cutters out of the drawer and put em to use!
Thanks!