16 Products to Help You Host a Better Dinner Party

Designer Duffy London says their reimagined piece of the playground makes for a whimsical dinner table. Yeah right. Like it isn't hard enough for me to transport food from my plate to my mouth when stationary. Could add an element of intrigue, and a great opportunity for a little friendly coordination competition, to the dinner party, though.

This raclette cheese melter's hovering heating element radiates down onto wedges or wheels secured beneath it to produce bubbly-hot layers of cheese you can scrape right off the top. The effect isn't just a delicious one for your breads, meats, vegetables, and belly, but also a pretty spectacular one for your dinner parties and buffets.

My friend Al from junior high's mama was Persian and used to make crispy rice every time I stayed over for dinner. Have you had crispy rice? Have you experienced its golden crust giving way to a glutinous, chewy spread of perfectly hydrated grains? Dude. I have to wipe away drool...and other fluids...just thinking about it. Crispy rice is like the crack of rice. And once you go rice crack, trust me, you'll never go back.

Dangerous Experiments for After Dinner: 21 Daredevil Tricks to Impress Your Guests should be the party gift of the summer. From sabering a bottle of Champagne to hanging a pear on a string over 2 criss-crossed knives, and then cutting the string to quarter the pear (?!) this daredevil deck of stuff to do besides talk about religion and politics is sure to be a big hit at your next gathering.

It also might make a colossal mess, destroy the porcelain spaniel figurine your wife's grandma gave her, and put someone's eye, but hey. Most of the best parties do.

Buying Filthy Rich Cocktail Napkins is an investment. An investment in the whimsical fun they'll bring to dinner parties with BBQ ribs, chicken wings, loaded burgers, and finger foods, such as giant bowls of Cheetos, Fritos, and Doritos.

A glass globe-and-funnel contraption straight out of the Real Genius chem lab, the Vaportini kit gassifies alcohol into a breathable cloud of intoxication. Instant intoxication. Calorie-free intoxication. Yes, I agree. The Vaportini is both the best and worst* culinary invention ever created.

*Vaportini reps suggest that the vessel's speedy kick-in characteristic actually advocates responsible drinking. Since we feel the liquor's effects shortly after exhalation, our typical desire to knock another one back right away - or in this case, hit the straw again - subsides. However, the idea is based on the assumption that people understand what it means to have too much of a good thing, that less is more, and that overconsumption is a fundamental plague of the 21st century. Most people do not understand these things.

MagicalButter, or MB2, is a kettle-sized device that extracts the THC from cannabis (plus botanicals from other herbs if you're into that sort of thing) and incorporates it into base ingredients for elaborate feel-good drinks, entrees, and desserts. Or just a nice piece of feel-good buttered toast. In a few simple steps and the literal push of a button, the cooker's micro-processor controls will draw out the herbs' botanicals and fold them into butter, oils, and alcohols. It can produce both food and skincare products in as little as 2 hours.

See, dudes, hosting a better dinner party can be as easy as 1...2...weeeeed!

Oooh, that Silikomart 3D Silicone Baking Mold creation on the left looks like my mama's Flamingo Surprise Jell-O Salad got its hybridization on with a big hunk of Cherry Laffy Taffy. What's even cooler is that what it really is is a mirror-glazed cake the 3D mold was able to turn into such a trippy optical illusion.

While perhaps not as impressive as Dinara Kasko's Geometric Cake Molds, the Silikomart 3D Silicone Baking Mold appears to be a little more user-friendly. And Kasko herself seems to approve of the Silikomart approach, as the two have collaborated on a couple of the cake molds in her collection.