News lab — Pastry becomes more accessible with the Moulinex I-Coach Touch and its touch screen

The I-Coach Touch is the latest pastry robot from Moulinex, and the one with which the firm hopes to finally succeed in establishing itself in this market today dominated by KitchenAid and Kenwood. It must be said that the firm has released its best recipe: the Cookeo interface, and more precisely the Cookeo Touch. The I-Coach Touch is thus equipped with a screen which allows it to offer, not automatic programs as is the case on the Kenwood Titanium Pastry Chef, but real support. Budding pastry chefs are taken by the hand here, from the choice of recipes to their creation. A more than welcome boost for a discipline as demanding as pastry, and which often ends up discouraging to the point of putting your robot away in the cupboard for good.

The idea therefore seems good to us, but the time has come to see how Moulinex has implemented it. If the Cookeo interface has proven itself, twice already since it has also been adapted for the I-Companion Touch, transposing it into the world of pastry is not necessarily so simple. It only takes a small error in a step to completely fail a recipe, not to mention the cooking and preparation and rest conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.) which are beyond the control of the robot.

The Cookeo interface, with some new features

We received the I-Coach Touch from the editorial office and we are obviously eager to turn it on to discover this interface, or rather rediscover it. As on the latest Cookeo — Touch, Touch Pro or Touch Mini — or Companion — Touch or Touch Pro —, it is based around a 4.3-inch color touch screen, which gives access to a catalog of recipes accompanied by several search tools. If you have already used one of these multicookers or multifunction robots, you should not be lost, although a few additions should be noted for baking.

We thus find a new section for so-called “basic” recipes, i.e. preparations which often appear in other recipes. We can therefore access them directly from the home screen, but also via an insert directly integrated into the recipes that use them. In the latter case, simply click on it to access it, and a new insert will allow you to return to the initial recipe once the basic one is completed. This avoids ending up with recipes that are too long, and having for example 15 steps to go through if you prepared your tart base the day before or if you use a ready-made dough due to lack of time – it happens, we don’t judge (or just a little). This also allows you to free yourself from robot recipes to experiment with tastes and flavors, but always with solid foundations. You can of course also search for a recipe by keyword or indicating ingredients; two maximum.

Very supervised step-by-step

Currently, the robot includes 137 recipes. Each is divided into several steps, which the robot carries out one by one to guide the user, while taking care of programming the robot. These steps most often consist of one or two actions to be carried out, and we appreciate being able to find the quantities of ingredients when using them without having to go back to the beginning of the recipe.

Moulinex has also provided little tips and explanatory videos for the most complex steps, such as turning puff pastry or poaching. There are also some technical videos on the home page, for rolling out a pie crust or lining a cake mold. Another little exclusive to I-Coach Touch, verification steps are also included in certain recipes. Concretely, a photo of the expected result in the bowl – or on the knife when it comes to checking the cooking of a cake – is presented to the user, who can then indicate whether they have obtained the same result .

Otherwise, it will be necessary to select the problem encountered and resolve it by switching to manual mode when possible… or by starting again if it is unrecoverable, such as over-whipped and grainy egg whites. This verification system seems quite well thought out to us, but perhaps not thorough enough yet. And at the same time, you should not integrate too many of these checks at the risk of slowing down the user for nothing; many steps are still difficult to miss.

Support that could go a little further

We went through several recipes without coming across any verification steps. On ganache, we do find one, but sliced ​​ganache is surprisingly not one of the problems identified even though it is undoubtedly the most common. On the other hand, the preparation method chosen by Moulinex – boiling the cream and using it to melt the chocolate – should make it possible to avoid this and it is therefore useless to propose such a possibility. On the other hand, we would have liked a little more in-depth monitoring of the cooking; What about cakes that fall or burn, or macaroons without rims or cracks? Of course, it will be impossible to recover, but we can take advice for the next time.

We may also be concerned about not finding these validation steps in the recipes proposed by the community. The editing tool does not seem to allow it and so far we have only found “official” recipes concocted by Moulinex. We also hope that the community will quickly enrich this catalog of recipes, because this is obviously one of the great strengths of Cookeo, which can boast of offering nearly 3000 recipes to its users. With 137, the I-Coach Touch is obviously far away. We also hope to see the basic recipes enriched, with for example diplomat cream, whipped ganache, dacquoise or even puff pastry for pastries.

In short, the new robot from Moulinex is still a little young, but we have no trouble seeing its potential in terms of supporting budding pastry chefs… but can it compete with the best robots on the market in the technical plan ? Response in a few days with our complete test.