My sister and I used to bake thousands of Christmas cookies every year. My parents would give them out as holiday gifts, so Sarah and I would make them buy the ingredients, eat half the product then charge our folks $2 a gift for shipping and handling. Not a bad racket, huh? (Our cookies never looked like the ones in this picture. We were more like the cookies in this #nailedit article.)

I don’t really bake anymore (I still eat too much of the product), but Sarah bakes all the time. Last year I bought her what I thought would be the perfect Christmas gift: a baking aid that you run with an app.

How the Drop Kitchen Connected Scale works is that you download recipes to the app, then you add ingredients to the one bowl one at a time. The scale tells you when to stop adding flour, sugar, chocolate chips, etc. No measuring! Perfect proportions every time! Wonderful cookies!

Sarah and I both loved the concept, but like many gadgets (remember the breadmakers of the 1980s?), she soon found that she stopped using it. Turns out it just wasn’t that hard to measure a cup of sugar and pour it into a bowl. And there really weren’t that many extra dishes. And she made perfect cookies without the app.

So now we have CHiP, a “Keurig” for cookies. Like Keurig coffee pods, the dough comes pre-measured and ready to bake. Then you use the app to start the process, and in 10 minutes you have warm, fresh, perfect cookies. All this convenience can be yours for just $249 (though it’s cheaper right now on Kickstarter).

Umm. I just. I mean. Really? You can buy some pretty yummy raw dough in the grocery store and have cookies in about 15 minutes, right? (Or eat the dough raw and eliminate the middle step). Or you could just buy cookies from a local bakery. Is this kind of technology really necessary at a $250 price point? (And that’s not counting the dough, of course.)

What do you guys think? And what are you baking this holiday season? And will you send me some?