WHAT IT IS
The Tefal Fruit Sensation is a blender with a 600ml glass jug and two 160ml plastic mills – one for hard ingredients like spices and the other for herbs.
THE BLENDER
• It did what it’s designed to do well – make drinks. It churned out watermelon juice, a pulpy orange juice (I cut three oranges into chunks) and a strawberry smoothie (with strawberry bits in it) effortlessly.
• It even breaks down ice cubes into the drinks but won’t crush them into fine crystals for a slushie or ice kacang.
• Juices aside, it did a pretty good chop-and-mix job on rempah, although I had to add some water or oil to moisten the mixture and make it easier to pulverise the ingredients. Compared to round blender jugs, the squarish jug here made it harder for dry ingredients to swirl smoothly inside it.
THE MILLS
• The spice mill ground hard foods like almonds, peanuts and coffee beans to a fine powder. But it worked so quickly I couldn’t achieve a coarse chop to make, say, a chilli dip.
• The herb mill minced some foods more evenly than others – chilli padi and lemongrass were finely chopped but garlic, onions and red chillies were shredded into a mix of large and small pieces. You’ll have to quarter onions and red chillies so they fit into the mill.
• Both mills come with user-friendly caps that open easily with a press – so convenient when I had to stick a spoon in to scrape down the sides.
• Like most choppers, they are deafeningly loud when in action.
VERDICT
“Space-saving and great for making drinks and small batches of food, but it was so noisy!” – Tsiao Hui
Tefal Fruit Sensation, $109, from major electrical stores
This article was originally published in Simply Her January 2015.