I may be the only baker in the world who doesn’t like my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. It’s certainly well made, kneads dough like a champ and will eventually do the job, but if the recipe says to cream butter and sugar the KA doesn’t work well at all. Everything gets thrown up on the sides of the bowl and the stuff on the bottom just sits there. You have to shut it off to scrape the bowl and if you want everything well combined you have to do this several times. May as well use a whisk.

The Mixmaster bowls have much straighter sides and the bowls spin. To scrape the sides of the bowl you just hold a spatula against the side of the bowl as it spins. Elegant simplicity. I am considering junking the KA in favor of a new Mixmaster. They still make them and they’re cheap. Very cheap.

Only problem is that the new ones are trash. Useless smoking lumps after one or two uses. Like a lot of things, they just don’t cost enough. Sad!

Vintage, then, like the one I used for decades. Sunbeam “Torpedo”, ca. 1960. You can buy them restored for about the price of a new KA. Problem is they’re all 50 years old and after flames shot out of the one I had I’m a little gun shy.

Let me try to make peace with the KA.

Wish I could help you but I’m way beyond baking.

Get a Hobart. Ask Brenda about that. She has a custom painted one.

Gotta say that I agree with Steve. The Sunbeam is nicer for creaming butter and sugar, especially for smaller batches of cookies. The ingredients get lost in the Kitchen Aid.

Mom had a Sunbeam Mixmaster. I remember baking my first cookies with that puppy, including spinning the bowl while scraping down the sides.

I currently have a Kitchen Aid from the era when it was made by Hobart. Like Quirt said recently, machines from that era are built like tanks and I love it for whipping egg whites, making quick bread and yeasted bread dough.

We won a pretty nice Kitchen Aid hand mixer in some contest like thirty years ago. It arrived at our house unexpectedly and we couldn't figure out where it came from. Turns out Mr wtg filled out some contest form for "why I love C&H Sugar" or something like that, and it was a prize.

It's the next best thing to the Mixmaster for creaming butter and sugar.

I really don’t bake. Mostly because then I’d eat the baked goods.

Classic European tortes were usually on the table at my parents' Sunday afternoon gatherings, so I grew up with that genre of dessert.

I used to do some fancy baking and desserts when we used to entertain a lot but that's in the past for me, too.

I remember making a sugar cage something like this one:



And I've also made my share of Napoleono tortas, a Lithuanian specialty. Pound of butter and a container of sour cream in the pastry and another pound in the frosting. Apricot or berry preserves and a very eggy custard between the layers:




This discussion had me paging through a few of my favorite baking cookbooks, looking for something to whip up....

Breville.

Trust me on this.

I was given a Kitchenaid stand mixer when I got married, and then another one a few years after that. I donated both of them to charity.

My problem is that they are huge, heavy, and take up a lot of space. It can't live on my counter, and I don't want to haul it up the stairs from the basement.

So have made do with a hand mixer, a whisk, and my hands for bread.

I do remember the old mixers where the bowl twirled. My mom had one of those, and it seemed to work well.

quote:

Originally posted by Mikhailoh:
I really don’t bake. Mostly because then I’d eat the baked goods.

Exactly.

I grew up with a hand mixer. It worked fine to me because I didn't know anything else existed. You certainly didn't have the trouble of it not creaming butter and sugar well, because you had all the control. You just pointed it at the part that needed to be mixed.

About the time I left home, my mother got a stand mixer, a Sunbeam Mixmaster. I don't actually think it was more powerful than the little hand mixer, but you could walk away from it and let it do the work. I found this magical, and still do.

I made do with a hand mixer until Mama got me a Mixmaster when I was in my thirties. I used it for years, but it was a later model and its plastic gears did not survive a couple of incidents when one of my teenagers let a spatula get sucked through its beaters. (There is a strong possibility that some or all of these incidents were the work of a future pastry chef, but I am not sure about that.)

Sometime after the turn of the century, I replaced it with a KitchenAid, which I like a lot. It's notably more powerful than the Mixmaster was. I solved the things-not-getting-mixed-because-they-were-stuck-to-the-side-of-the-bowl problem by getting a newfangled beater that has a rubber squeegee on one side. It really helps.

It lives on my counter. I do not mind this because it looks good there. There is way, way, way too much carp on our countertops, but I am not organized enough to do anything about it. The KitchenAid is the least of my countertop worries.

I have both, and my kitchenaid sits in the corner of the counter, covered. I almost never use it, when I need a mixer, I use a plug in hand mixer. (Which was until about 8 years ago, the sunbeam mixer my mom bought in the early 60’s! That thing ran forever!

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
Breville.

Trust me on this.

Interesting. I have a Breville espresso maker, toaster and hand held blender and love all three. Well designed and very reliable. I will have to look into their mixers. How does it perform on this thread's complaint?

I feel as though I am reading about what parts are best for a moon launch.
I use the mix for Red Mill cornbread.
Other than that God made bakeries for a reason.

Bob's Red Mill products are great. CBS Sunday Morning had a piece on him last week. He is planning to give his entire company to his employees.

Yes to Bob's Red Mill, Mik, on all fronts. The best polenta I've EVER had. I've actually liked all their stuff, but the polenta is to die for.

I grew up with a mixmaster, and I echo everyone's comments on the benefits v a Kitchen Aid mixer. BUT... for big family meals or intense work, I feel like my Kitchen Aid is superior. I'm thinking about things like making gigantic vats of mashed potatoes when the entire fam is coming for Thanksgiving. I've had that mixer going on the spuds continuously for 30 minutes or more and the engine gets warm but it just keeps whirring. I've never felt like a Sunbeam Mixmaster was up to that task.

Besides, they come in groovy colors!

I hear about the space and weight. I keep mine in a cabinet in the kitchen island, where it's not that bad to lug out. I'm not a fan of having a lot of stuff on my counter other than the things I use every day--toaster, nespresso are it.