Chicky-Poo and Banana Muffins

What is this? Is it this year's hot new Christmas toy? The next big decorating trend (move over, roosters!)? No, this is my new favorite kitchen gadget.


This is Mashy the Egg Masher. You can call him Chicky-Poo (a name my kids coined). I found him a few weeks ago at Homegoods. I make egg salad fairly frequently, and have always found egg mashing to be, not difficult, but kind of a pain. Nothing really did the trick for me...potato masher? too big; pastry blender? mine's a piece of junk. What I had been doing is the old-fashioned pastry "cutting in" method with two knives. I wasn't sure how good Chicky would be at his intended job, but at $1.99, it was worth a try.

Well, I am happy to say that Chicky does an egg-cellent job at egg mashing! Fantastic, really! And he's kind of cute and funny, too. Not only that, but he is multi-purpose. Last night I made guacamole, and, light-bulb moment!, I put Chicky to work. He smashed up those avocados with panache. This afternoon, I decided to make banana muffins, and there was Chicky looking at me hopefully from the countertop.

[I more or less used Lindsay's recipe; I used regular sugar instead of rapdura and skipped the crumb topping, but I did use coconut oil.]

Here he is gettin' down and dirty with the 'nanas (as you can see, one in particular was really ripe).


Here he is standing proud in the finished product...perfect banana mash.


Here he is keeping an eye on me as I mix up the muffins. I heart my vintage Pyrex mixing bowls.


And here he is getting ready to enjoy the fruit of his labors...with butter, please! Yum.

If you can find one of these little guys, add him to your staff.