Heart shaped ice cubes tray - gags discontinued by Cal Exotics - review by Jul!a

Looking for a way to add a cute touch to your drink? This is definitely something that will do that. Instead of boring old ice cubes, spice things up with a little heart.

The adorably pink tray comes in a plastic bag with a cardboard flap on the top. The top doesn't tell you anything productive really, other than the manufacturer and that it's a novelty item and "adverse use on any function of the body is prohibited."

The tray is pretty flexible, although when you get towards the center it gets less flexible, and therefore a little harder to get some of the center hearts out. I've found that running some warm water over the back of the tray and then sort of slapping the back of the tray helps to pop out any heats that don't seem to want to come out. I've noticed that it's easier to get the frozen hearts out of the tray if you're twisting the tray face down onto a plate or into a large bowl rather than trying to twist and dig them out the more "traditional" way.

The tray is small enough at about 7"x4" to be able to fit more than one in a row in a larger freezer, or you could fit it in the small freezer section of something like a mini-fridge. There's 12 hearts total, two with a 1 1/2" diameter (from the dip in the top to the point in the bottom), four with a 1 1/4" diameter, and six with just under a 1" diameter. The tray is about 3/4" tall and seems to be a little curved upwards, in a very slight bowl shape.

There's no raised edge or anything like that around each heart, so your options are to either fill them not quite all the way, or deal with the little bit of hanging out that the liquid will do between forms. If you're filling it with just water, the traditional route of letting the tray hang out underneath the faucet works just fine. But if you're wanting more precision, a measuring cup, or anything else with a spout, will work quite nicely.

Here's a shot to try and show you what happens when you end up with some overfill after everything freezes:


The smaller hearts will obviously melt a little faster than the bigger ones, but the big ones are pretty thick, so they'll hang out in your drink a decent amount of time.

This picture shows you each size frozen, and also what might happen if you have over spill:


Much like with any other ice cube tray, you can use this to make cubes out of anything that will freeze. You can also use it as a mold for chocolate, soap, etc. Jello will probably take some work to get out of the molds though, since it's so jiggly and difficult to work with sometimes.

There weren't any instructions on how to clean it, and being a child of the technology age, I like everything to be dishwasher safe. So I gave it a shot. Turns out, it does come through the dishwasher pretty well. At least when I did it.

I like this tray. It's adorable, the hearts are multiple sizes, and it's pink. Honestly, I was sold at it being pink and heart shaped, but it's surprised me, and I'm looking forward to being able to give plenty of guests heart shaped ice.