Pastry scrapers are designed to cut dough and for cleaning flour and bits of dough from pastry boards. Cooks are creating more uses for this handy tool, often for prep jobs once reserved for knives.

The tool features a wide, stainless blade with a handle on top. It does a good job chopping vegetables and dicing potatoes. The advantage is it then becomes a spatula to load the stuff into a pan.

Oxo’s device includes a silicon handle at about $10, available in kitchenware stores and departments.

Canton Repository