Measuring Ingredients and Portions

I failed this weekend. Twice. And I failed at something I'm not too shy to admit that I'm good at: Granola bar bites. I had such a craving for them, so I picked up some dried fruit at the grocery store this weekend. And sinfully so, I also had some chocolate and peanut butter chips on hand. So I made one batch, but divided the batter before adding the fruit and chips.

It went wrong.
I ended up with granola:

And granola bar bites that sort of took shape...

...but fell apart as soon as I picked them up. "Damn," I said.

At least everything still tasted good, so it wasn't a total loss, but when you want granola bar bites and you're stuck with granola, well...it defeats the purpose.

I don't know what happened. Maybe I should have measured out my ingredients a little more closely, like...with this OXO food scale:

Food scales are great for two very important reasons. You can accurately measure out ingredients (which I apparently did not do), and you can measure out perfect portions if need be. Needless to say, I was all too excited when OXO offered to send me one for free. Let's be honest, who doesn't love a good kitchen gadget?

I digress.

The scale. It's totally useful. And user-friendly:

I've been sitting on a few bags of hazelnuts with the intent of making my own Nutella, but I had been hard pressed to find a recipe that I liked. So when I finally did, I pulled my hair out over the fact that it called for 150 grams of hazelnuts. As if that's easy to determine when all of your measuring spoons are in cup increments. So I whipped out the scale, put the bowl on top of it, then poured in hazelnuts until 150 grams had been added to the bowl's weight. I measured out the required chocolate, too:

I love that the scale is quite compact, and the display screen pulls out in the event that your bowl is bigger than life itself. This particular model, if you're interested, measures out up to five pounds of goodness. (I wish I could measure out five pounds of chocolate for something, just sayin'.)

Let's get back to the Nutella. Not pictured: cocoa powder, vanilla extract and a touch of vegetable oil. I decide to leave out the powdered sugar that the original recipe called for. I didn't have any, and didn't really want any in it. Perhaps that would have made the end result a bit creamier. Mine was slightly thicker than normal Nutella.

But it was still quite good. Like, eat-right-off-the-spoon good. Or eat-on-a-rice-cake good, as in the photo above. You wanna know what's really good, though? The fact that OXO sent me two scales for free. One for me, one for you. Well...if you win.

Leave a comment below for a chance to make my extra scale the newest addition to your kitchen. Tell me why you need a food scale, and I'll pick one winner at random. Be sure to leave a valid email address, too. If you don't, I won't be able to find out your mailing address and you'll forfeit the win!

Details: Contest closes at midnight EST on Tuesday, May 29, 2012. Winner will be announced on Wednesday, May 30, 2012. Open to US residents only. All opinions of the food scale are my own an in no way influenced by the free-ness of it.