Remember when your dinner lady at school would quarter, core and peel your apple for you at lunch time? Clearly this is the way apples are meant to be cut, and thus we have our objective.
Scissors might not be the first thing you think of when you want to cut an apple, but we actually managed pretty well with this, making short work of the cutting and coring stages.
It is worth mentioning at this point that although the Scissors delivered results well above our expectations, a fair amount of pressure was requred in order to slice through the apple. After going through several boxes of apples in this way you’d need an expensive wrist and hand massage to restore yourself to a fully functioning state.
[Seeking to alleviate this problem of pressure to the wrist and fingers, we suggest that there is a gap in the market for "Apple Scissors" - otherwise ordinary kitchen scissors specially adapted with long handles to give better leverage and an all round happier cutting experience.]
However, for the purposes of our investigation the Scissors did a good job, with cleanly cut edges and a reasonable post-peeling finish coupled with good flesh retention (i.e. the peelings were satisfyingly thin).
With a tough act to follow, we got stuck in with the Pizza Cutter and immediately hit problems due to its centrally mounted blade (we’d had these before, when testing the courgette). We didn’t let ourselves get flustered though, and soon found that these could be fairly easily mitigated with a change in cutting technique; instead of trying to slice through the whole apple at once, this required a few seperate cuts pressed in towards the centre, working around the diameter of the apple until it had been halved.
We were pleasantly surprised with the Pizza Cutter’s ability to peel the apple, achieving a result to pretty much match the Scissors’ effort.
In the end, it looks close. However, it was felt that there was an element of unnecessary danger when using the Pizza Cutter. We don’t feel comfortable in its ability to carry out the job without blood loss issues, having as it does a tendency to lodge its blade in the apple and stick without warning. Clearly we do not advocate the use of a Pizza Cutter to prepare an apple in your own home. This safety issue, coupled with the slightly inferior peeled finish (note the larger gouges in the Pizza Cutter’s effort) hands victory to the Scissors.
Thanks to Maeve for the apple idea.
