A new butter dish is set to solve the problems that plague butter spreaders around the world. The dish can either warm or cool your butter to keep it at the perfect temperature for spreading.
We've all had the experience. You come home with a great loaf of bread you picked up at your favorite neighborhood bakery, or perhaps you baked one yourself. You're all set to enjoy your daily dose of carbohydrates and you reach into the fridge to grab the perfect accompaniment, some creamy delicious butter. You stick the knife in the stick or tub, but it's just too hard to spread. You wind up with uneven chunks of butter randomly putting holes in your bread while some areas remain completely unbuttered, ruining your meal or snack.
If keeping your butter at the ideal temperature for spreading is near the top of your list of problems, then you're lucky enough to have a pretty charmed life. Nevertheless, it can be an annoying and frustrating experience to the extent that David Alfille of the UK invented the perfect solution to this timeless conundrum.
Mr. Alfille's technological butter breakthrough took two years to develop and consists of a dish that can either warm or cool your butter to the perfect temperature for spreading. The user can set the temperature controls to create the perfect consistency for their personal taste. "It's similar to a mini-fridge but it will heat and cool," explains Alfilles. "With modern technology there's a little plate called a thermo-electric cooler - one side of it gets hot and the other gets cold. What we have done is changed the polarity round so sometimes it heats and sometimes it cools. The dish means in winter you can heat it up and in summer you can keep it cooler so it doesn't spread too thinly."
The dish measures six inches wide, five inches long and four inches tall, and plugs into an electrical outlet, where it is meant to remain on continuously. 'People don't realize how much technology goes into it. The biggest thing was trying to get all the electronics into something small enough, because we didn't want something massive and unsightly,' he explained. It is currently available from his website in the UK and retails for around $55, with a stainless steel version costing slightly more.
