It's Christmas.
I saw there had been a bit of discussion regarding Kitchen Aid stand mixers etc - what's the overall opinion? Worthwhile? Or only if you are a Bake-Off wannabee? How flexible are they?
Really outstanding. They’re not cheap, and I’ve got more invested in the attachments than the actual mixer. But we use ours a lot. To be honest, it’s transformed the quality of our food. I grind my own meat, make my own bread/rolls/baguettes, and now pasta, and we use it to shred/grate large quantities of cheese, whip fresh cream etc.
Not all are equal though. There are three basic models.
Tilt-head. I had one of these years ago, and the tilt-lock mechanism wears, leading to a “chattery” experience. Usually smaller bowl, smaller wattage motor.
Bowl-lift, AC motor. Larger/taller than the tilt-head models, with bigger bowl and larger motor.
Bowl-lift DC motor. Same size as the AC variant, but more powerful motor. This is what we have, got it on sale in Costco the better part of 10 years ago. In full transparency, I didn’t realize it was the DC variant until some time later. My only failure in that time has been the planetary gear mechanism cracked about 6 months ago. If you google the planetary mechanism for the AC and DC variants, you can see the DC one is much more chunky than the AC one.
I’ll take some photos in a bit and comment on the accessories we have.
But to answer the original question, it’s the Dualit toaster of home mixers.