Whole Pie Maker kitchen gadget is set to be our new hero this holiday baking season - Japan Today

Homemade pie is one of life’s great simple pleasures. Whether it’s with a sweet or savory filling, a mouthful of warm deliciousness sandwiched between perfectly cooked flaky crust is a surefire way to shake off the wintertime blues on a cold day.

Actually, we should say that eating pie is one of life’s great simple pleasures. Making pie, on the other hand, can be a great big hassle, with a lot of annoying prep work before you get to take a single bite. Lucky for us, though, there’s a way to skip almost all of the hassle, thanks to Thanko.

The Japanese cooking gadget maker has an uncanny ability to know just what we want to help us achieve our home chef ambitions, and last year they created the Pie Maker, a handy little plug-in machine that let you cook a pair of mini pies. It was a great idea, especially considering that very few homes in Japan have a large, dedicated oven for baking. The only problem was that the pies were pretty small, so now Thanko is offering the Whole Pie Maker.

The Whole Pie Maker, which Thanko also called the “Okina Pie Maker” (meaning “Big Pie Maker” in Japanese), will bake you a pie with a 26-centimeter diameter. Included with the device is a circular cutting dye to be used with pre-made pie sheets, letting you stamp out the bottom and top crusts.

Once you have the bottom crust in place, add in your filling. In Thanko’s example photo below they’re using instant curry roux for a meaty savory pie, but the only limit is your imagination.

▼ Some of Thanko’s other ideas are blueberry jam and cream cheese pie and a potato salad, corn, and mayo pie.

Once you’ve got your filling filled in, cover the pie with a sheet of dough to form the top crust, close the lid, and let the machine cook and do its pie-making magic for 15 minutes. When it’s done…

…you’ll have a beautifully baked pie, one that’s big enough to share.

Thanko promises that the Whole/Big Pie Maker will provide you with “super big happiness,” and that claim seems pretty convincing, looking at the photos of what it’s capable of. It’s being offered through the Thanko online shop here for 6,280 yen, and if you end up making too much and need help eating the leftovers, don’t hesitate to let us know.

Source, images: Thanko via IT Media