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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 67 customer reviews )
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106 of 108 found the following review helpful:
 Absolutely the best - amazing corn dogs, first time! Dec 11, 2009
By Joel Avrunin
"Electrical Engineer who loves Science, History, Economics, and Literature"
This may sound like an odd review, but we have been looking for something like this device for a long time. Hot dogs are a great kid-friendly dinner, and surprisingly low in calories and fat if you get chicken dogs. Corn dogs are tons of fun, but frying them is not only not good for you, it makes dinner heavy and greasy. We tried many times to make oven-corn-dogs, but the batter always fell off. It looked very unappetizing. This corn dog device is perfect. We mixed the batter according to the recipe, put the corn dogs (along with the batter), and a few minutes later, perfect corn dogs on a stick. The outside is crisp (with a nice texture), and the inside fluffy. As close as you can get to frying without actually frying.
It could be improved. First, while hot dogs do come in various sizes, these molds are too short for almost any hot dog. We ended up cutting off the ends of all of them, and then making a corn dog composed of 3 end pieces. It did such a nice job with cooking the bread that you couldn't tell which one wasn't a single dog. Second, it would be nice if the plates were removeable for easier cleaning. I'm still giving this 5 stars because I had an awesome dinner with it.
Overall, glad I bought it, and I would buy it again. Single use appliances are generally not my favorite, but corn dogs need this type of device, and everybody needs home-made corn dogs.
***Update 5 months later***
Wow.... still loving this corn dog maker. Same comments as above--it's not perfect, but everybody in the family looks forward to corn dog night. We use it about once every 2 weeks. We're still buying standard hot dogs, cutting off the ends, and then making a corn dog of cut-off pieces. Another reviewer suggested buying really long hot dogs and cutting them in half. I like that idea, but not sure if they make long chicken hot-dogs. Go ahead and buy this great device, get some spicy honey mustard, and enjoy!
57 of 57 found the following review helpful:
More than corn dogs Jul 23, 2010
By K. C. Zimmerman
"Habanerofire"
We just got this and within minutes had to test it out. It worked perfectly and is so quick and easy to use! I personally didn't care for the first batter recipe (haven't tried the second one yet). It was good so long as there was hot dog in with every bite, but at the end where I had just dough left, it's not tasty on it's own, but that's no big deal, it's easy enough to change the recipe or use a different recipe all together. I made the first batch without even using the sticks. This will thrill my daughter who loves corn dogs, but isn't a fan of the stick getting in her way of eating it. I'm so excited to try other things with it too. I have so many ideas of what can be made with this fun gadget. I had some crescent dough in the fridge and wrapped a piece around a cheese stick and cooked that up- it turned out perfectly cooked, a bit bland it needed some seasoning or a different type of dough, but you can see the possibilities. You can take any dough or batter and add something to it. Pancake/Sausage dogs, stuffed pizza sticks, put sliced apples in a sweet batter and make a kind of apple fritter on a stick. I have a beer bread recipe, and I think that would be great coating for cheese stuffed jalapenos. You could even just use cake, muffin or pancake batter and make some interesting shaped breakfast or dessert items. I have not tried this yet, but I have an idea for S'mores on a stick, use a sweet batter (like pancake, or maybe someone has an idea how to make batter that tastes like graham crackers) place several mini marshmallows on the stick, place it on the batter in the corn dog maker, sprinkle with chocolate chips, and top off with batter close and let cook. Yum.
I plan to use this for the coming school year to make homemade grab and go breakfast items (like sausage on a stick). I make a bunch up, freeze em, and my husband and daughter can just pop them in the microwave and head off to school. I can make them cheaper and healthier than the store bought ones.
update on the S'more dogs. First attempt at these FAIL. They tasted great, but made a mess. The marshmallow and chocolate melted before the dough could even cook. I'm going to change a few things and try it again. First do not use regular marshmallows cut in half, they are still too big. I was excited to make these, and this is what I had on hand. Next time I will use the mini marshmallows and freeze them on the stick before cooking- This should give the batter enough time to set before the marshmallow melts. While I had chocolate chips, I also had a Hersey bar. This works perfect. Break the bar into individual pieces, and two get laid down end to end. One bar has enough pieces to fill all 6 molds. Also be careful that you do not overfill the bottom with batter. Put enough in lay down the chocolate(which would also be ideal to freeze before cooking) lay a marshmallow skewer on top of that and cover with enough batter that does not leave any chocolate or marshmallow exposed. I was a little sloppy in my process, and made a big mess. The machine cleaned up fairly easily, but I think freezing the marshmallow and chocolate before cooking is the key to having the batter set before everything starts melting. For the batter I used the included batter recipe in the book but made some changes. I used 3/4 cup white flour in pace of (instead of) of the 1/4 cup corn meal and 1/2 cup wheat flour. I upped the sugar and used two TBS Brown sugar instead of plain and 1 TBS honey. When they are done cooking use a spatula to remove from machine. Do not attempt to pick them up by the stick until they have cooled for a few minutes, otherwise they just fall apart.
46 of 48 found the following review helpful:
Perfect for vegetarians Feb 02, 2010
By NWArkGirl
"Mickey"
Now that Morningstar has ceased making their veggie corndogs, I was desperate to find something to substitute. My daughters school serves corn dogs a lot and I try to match her menu with similar veggie items. This is perfect. I use veggie dogs instead of hotdogs and then follow the recipe for the batter. She loves them and actually I think they are better than the morningstar ones. plus, I like controlling the ingrediants to reduce sodium and other bad things. I don't feel bad about serving her these between the healthy veggie dog and the baked not fried batter. It took me a few turns to get the batter and dog placement exactly right. And as another review said, you have to cut any dog because they don't fit in the wells, but I did what he did and just used the ends of the veggie dogs to make my last corn dog.
16 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 Nearly perfect appliance makes fun and tasty veggie dogs Mar 22, 2010
By Stacy E. Braxton
After the demise of Morningstar Farm's vegetarian corn dogs, we -- like many other reviewers here -- decided to make our own. This corn dog maker fell just short of perfect, but it was still vastly preferable to deep frying.
A few notes:
Use the ballpark length hot dogs (the longer ones). Cut in half, they'd be just about the correct size for the trays.
We had been saving our non-veggie corn dog sticks to use when the machine came. Unfortunately, the grooves on the sides of the machine where the sticks rest only allow for round sticks. The machine comes with a pack of these, or you could use bamboo kebab skewers -- just not flat popsicle-style sticks, or the lid won't close completely.
We used the included recipe that called for two boxes of corn muffin mix. Way too much batter! Fortunately we had an extra pack of hot dogs to use up the extra, but I would recommend halving that recipe for one pack of dogs (assuming you cut them in half).
The "ready" light seemed a bit temperamental. After the first batch, I waited about 10 minutes for the machine to indicate it was hot again, then gave up waiting, poured them anyway, and they were fine. Seven minutes turned out to be the magic cooking time.
The manual warns you not to overfill, but by the third batch I really started slopping the batter on top of the dogs. My conservatively and neatly filled batches never rose up to touch the top plate.
You're probably not going to get perfectly shaped dogs like in the picture, but they're tasty and cute and your kids will never notice if they look a bit rough.
21 of 23 found the following review helpful:
 Smaller than expected...I cannot positively endorse. Dec 01, 2010
By s_man
"Scott"
This waffle/corn dog iron is smaller than expected. I am not sure what kind of corn dogs that they are talking about, but it surely is not the ones I grew up on. In order to use this device properly, the hot dogs have to be cut in half. Otherwise they will not fit in molds correctly. It would work better as waffle/corn vienna sausage maker.
Another negative issue that I encountered was that steam and condensation collected behind the upper plate. This area contains the monitoring lights and some wiring, which also eventually filled with condensation.
And lastly, the temperature of the iron plates seem to fluctuate and maintaining a proper cooking temp proves difficult for this unit.
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