This $12 Oxo Bench Scraper Makes Baking a Million Times Easier

A bench scraper, also known as a bench knife or dough scraper, is a flat, rectangular piece of steel with a handle on top. It’s used by professional chefs and home cooks alike to divide dough, scrape surfaces, scoop up chopped ingredients, smooth icing onto cakes, and even clean off cutting boards. In short, it’s a simple and inexpensive tool that gets a lot of use in the kitchen.

As a dessert lover, “Great British Baking Show” fan, and home baker, I’m always on the lookout for tools that make baking easier and the resulting desserts look more professional—and that is definitely true of my Oxo Good Grips Multi-Purpose Scraper and Chopper. I use it to level off ingredients in measuring cups and spoons, slice banana bread, scrape flour off my cutting board when I’m making dough, and so much more. When I made carrot cake from scratch for Easter earlier this year, I used a bench scraper to apply cream cheese frosting to the sides and top and smooth everything out for a professional looking finish. I’ve also used it to cube butter for homemade pie crust. Think of a bench scraper like a chef’s knife for bakers.

Of course, the bench scraper has applications beyond dessert. During the pandemic, my bench scraper got a lot of use dividing dough for homemade dumpling wrappers and scraping off the dried-up dough left on my cutting board after making sourdough loaves. For breakfast, a bench scraper is the ideal tool for nudging ingredients off the cutting board (much safer than a knife) and into the pan for scrambled eggs and fried rice, and it’s sharp enough to slice up Spanish tortilla and frittatas.

When shopping for a bench scraper, the main thing to look for is something that fits nicely in the palm of your hand. For me, that’s the Oxo Good Grips Multi-Purpose Scraper & Chopper. It’s just the right size and lightweight enough that I can comfortably use it, no matter the task. I’ve had my bench scraper for more than three years, and the quality has held up—the blade is still decently sharp and the soft non-slip grip has no signs of wear. I typically wash my bench scraper by hand, but it’s dishwasher-safe. 

While the Oxo Good Grips Multi-Purpose Scraper and Chopper is marketed as a great tool for portioning, scraping, and transferring dough, it isn’t the only thing it’s useful for. Even if you don’t make homemade dough at home there are many other helpful applications. Though if you are using it for dough, there are convenient measurement markings along the bottom of the blade to help with even sectioning. Beyond the many applications I’ve already mentioned, this bench scraper can be used to cut brownies, lift cookies off a baking sheet, and even roughly chop veggies, like mushrooms and celery. Over the years, I’ve found so many uses for my bench scraper and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I use it in baking and beyond.

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Abigail Abesamis Demarest is a freelance writer, editor, and former New Yorker based in sunny Panama City Beach, Florida. Her writing has been featured in HuffPost Food & Drink, Forbes.com, Insider, The Kitchn, MarthaStewart.com, Thrillist, and more.