The only thing the Show 8 was really great at? Suggesting madeleine pans for me to buy on Amazon. When I asked Alexa how to beat eggs until they’re “light and thick,” the Show 8 popped up a random mayonnaise recipe. The Echo Show laid out the Serious Eats recipe in just three novella-length steps: Make the batter. I ultimately “cheated” and asked for the exact title of the Serious Eats recipe word … for … word (having looked it up on my phone)-but the frustration continued. That made it hard to do anything but ask Alexa nicely. The Echo’s voice command search couldn’t give me what I wanted, and the Show 8 tends to think of its hard-to-access virtual keyboard as an input of last resort. When I tried to be more specific and asked for a recipe from my favorite cooking site, Serious Eats, I got random results, from a savory dish called Spinach Madeline to-believe it or not,-Vegetarian Pad Thai. I asked Alexa for a recipe and I got three pretty generic choices which, upon closer inspection, didn’t have the detail I needed as a first-time madeleine baker. Then it came time to find an actual recipe, which proved to be a challenge for Alexa and a frustration for me. While the episodes don’t offer much in the way of how-to technique, the Show 8’s screen proved large enough to see what bakers Rahul, Ruby, Kim-Joy, and Briony were doing as they assembled their madeleines on deadline. And since the Echo interfaces neatly with Netflix, that was a piece of cake, so to speak. The bake: I started my culinary adventure by rewatching that Season 9 episode of the baking show for inspiration. Our testers report that the Show 8 doesn’t sound great-which is too bad since we all need music to bake with-but performs very well otherwise. The Show 8 hits the sweet spot in Amazon’s current line of Show devices with a decent-sized screen, a modest footprint, and a reasonably low price. The device: For my maiden batch of madeleines, I chose the Amazon Echo Show 8.
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