‘This breakfast sandwich maker is the best thing since sliced bread’
When the craving for a warm, hearty breakfast strikes and time is of the essence, a sneaky McDonald’s sausage and egg McMuffin often becomes our family go-to on busy weekend mornings. Always a crowd pleaser, it’s so much quicker than cooking a fry up at home.
As a family, we generally aim to maintain a healthy diet, but occasionally, a cheeky breakfast treat from McDonald’s is just the ticket to kickstart the day. However, at £2.79 per muffin, not to mention the added costs of essential hash browns and adult coffees, it can quickly become a pricey way to usher in the weekend.
For fast food aficionados keen on keeping their expenses in check, one electric breakfast sandwich maker claims to make flawless breakfast muffins at home. Currently available to buy on shopping marketplace Yimbly (owned by the Mirror’s parent company Reach Plc), buyers could bag one for £24.29 – which could be less than a MacDonald’s Big Breakfast for four.
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With a regular price of £39.99, Yimbly have already discounted the Drew & Cole Breakfast Sandwich Maker to £24.99. Thanks to a limited time deal offering 10% of everything with code SPRING10, the price falls even further – making it the cheapest I’ve found online.
Having been lucky enough to be given the Drew & Cole appliance to test out at home last year, we regularly rustle up our own McDonald’s-inspired breakfasts. Using frozen sausage patties, eggs, English muffins and some American-style cheese slices, they are quick and easy to make at home.
The concept is straightforward – place your muffin at the bottom, layer on your pre-cooked fillings of choice, then crack an egg into the second tier and let it fry on the hot plate. Once your egg is cooked to perfection, simply rotate the bottom plate and voila, your breakfast muffin is assembled and ready to be devoured.
I find that the egg cooks swiftly and the cheese melts beautifully in no time, meaning that if you disregard the time spent cooking the sausage patties and bacon beforehand, you can indeed whip up “perfect English muffins in less than five minutes.”
However, there’s a catch. While the muffins look impressive, we only really use the Drew & Cole to cook the egg, melt some cheese and assemble the final product in a stylish manner.
It can prove cheaper than a drive-thru run though. To give you an idea of how much it costs, here’s a run down of my usual ingredients:
- Tesco frozen sausage patties – £2.50
- Tesco cheese slices – £1.39
- Tesco medium eggs x 6 – £1.40
- Tesco English muffins x 4 – £1.20
With just the above, I manage to create four fantastic breakfast muffins at £1.62 each, which is quite the bargain.
Measuring just 14cm in height and 16cm in width the sandwich maker is easy to store when not in use. It doesn’t require too much cleaning either, just a quick wipe down of the plates.
If this handy muffin maker isn’t quite what you are looking for, Amazon is selling the Breville Sandwich Press for £25. With a large, flat plate it can be used to whip up all kinds of sandwiches, panini’s muffins and more.
If you would rather try to recreate some delicious McDonald’s pancakes at home, Argos has 20% off the Giles & Posner Crepe Maker. The smart looking hot plate is reduced from £25 to £20 using code RED20 at checkout.
Fellow fast food enthusiasts who have switched to making muffins at home have left reviews for the Drew & Cole Breakfast Sandwich Maker on Google.
One buyer described the gadget as being “Brilliant.” They continued: “I love, love, love this little gadget. It’s just like buying from McDonalds. A word to the wise – use small eggs, otherwise they leak out. Very easy to clean, just wipe it down when you’re finished cooking”
A second added: “Great gadget. Takes a bit of getting used to. Made some wonderful things with it. I love experimenting with different fillings.”
Another shopper was delighted with their purchase, exclaiming: “Every sandwich I have cooked in this has been perfect. I’ve used it with bread, English muffins and crumpets, as well as fried and scrambled egg and a variety of cooked meats and bacon.”
Sadly, not everyone was quite so impressed with one buyer saying: “Quite disappointed with this to be honest. Its a little fiddly to use. On one run the egg took way longer than 5 minutes to cook. All the levels are fiddly to use and by nature of its design its quite ricketty. Nice idea that is not quite perfected.”
For the most part though, buyers like me love it. Another summed up the ease of use, adding: “This breakfast sandwich maker is the best thing since sliced bread. It is so easy to use and makes a brilliant sandwich. I wish I’d had one of these years ago.”
