Never endure the ordeal of cutting butter with a cold knife again, thanks to this new (and surprisingly dangerous sounding) “stick cutlery into a toaster” design

Background:

There is an idiomatic expression, “like a hot knife through butter,” indicating something that is extremely easy to do.

The issue:

Yet, somehow when people make toast, they frequently use a COLD knife (or at least, a room temperature one) to cut a piece of butter.

This is particularly troublesome if butter is stored in a fridge, in which case the butter-er has a cold-knife-plus-cold-butter situation on their hands.

Proposal:

In Figure 1, we see a regular pop-up toaster. Now, note the minor yet game-changing innovation in Figure 2: a special slot for a knife to rest in while the toaster operates.

This slot isn’t powered: it is just in proximity to the toaster’s heating elements. Thus, it doesn’t consume any additional electricity (and is unlikely to electrocute the operator).

**Fig. 1:** A regular pop-up toaster. Nothing exotic about it.

***Fig. 2:*** *The new modified toaster with a “warm up this knife so it easily cuts through butter” slot. The user should take particular care to not accidentally jam a metal utensil into the electric toaster.*

Conclusion:

One issue here is that we want the blade of the knife to get hot, but not the handle. It is possible that an insulated / plastic handle would be sufficient to solve this, but that does mean that this type of toaster wouldn’t be especially usable with just any old butter knife. Or the user could use an oven mitt to hold the knife.

PROS: This system operates entirely on the “waste” heat from the toaster, so it’s a zero-cost way to improve the toast-buttering experience.

CONS: Encouraging people to put metal cutlery into a toaster may increase the toaster-related-electrocution rate.