Help from bakers please!

[bcla]

Lol. This is me! Well, I don't have my Mom's, as she was still using it, but one day I was at a garage sale and someone was selling their old one because they had finally gotten a Kitchen Aid (the lady was in her 60s). So the Sunbeam was $5, and does everything I need it to.

I would like a Kitchen Aid too, but in this house I don't have the counter space and so my appliances are kept in the basement, and I don't want to be lugging it up and down the stairs.

I suppose the issue with a Sunbeam appliance is that they aren't what they used to be. I'm guessing that parts may be a little hard to come by if you need to make repairs. The basic design of a KitchenAid mixer is almost 80 years old, and I'm guessing that a 40 year old mixer can probably be repaired.

 

[Plaid Princess]

I'm going to pile on the KitchenAid train. I LOVE mine. I got it as a wedding gift 7 years ago and it runs like I just took it out of the box (and my mom's which is about 20 years old now still runs just as well). I use it almost daily, as I have a small cottage bakery business. I've thought about upgrading to the Pro version, but the little one is just fine for me.

On that note, if you do decide to get the Kitchen Aid, the first accessory you should buy her is the Scraper Blade. It's the best $20 I have spent for my kitchen. It's basically a combination of the pastry folding attachment and a rubber spatula. It's amazing, and I use it 99% of the time I'm using the mixer. There is a KitchenAid version, but it's more expensive and doesn't work as well IMO.

 

[denisem]

<snip>
On that note, if you do decide to get the Kitchen Aid, the first accessory you should buy her is the Scraper Blade. It's the best $20 I have spent for my kitchen. It's basically a combination of the pastry folding attachment and a rubber spatula. It's amazing, and I use it 99% of the time I'm using the mixer. There is a KitchenAid version, but it's more expensive and doesn't work as well IMO.

New Metro also makes blades for the various sizes/models of KA like this and is sold on Amazon. Plaid Princess is right, these are indispensible! (Especially for the lift-bowl models like my Pro 600).

We bought an extra since there were reports of breakage, but our first is going strong, even toughing it out with meatloaf.

 

[CPanther95]

Sadly the Kitchenaid mixers tanked in quality about 7 years ago. They were bought out and the new company went the route of sacrificing quality and milking what was once a quality product for as long as they can until the previous goodwill runs out. The main problem is that everyone knows to look for metal gears and KA has always used metal gears - so they kept the metal gears, but switched the gear housing from metal to plastic. Now if you put any real strain on the unit the gears heat up, soften the plastic, and the gears fly apart inside the unit. It makes a sound like somebody dropped a glass in a blender. Metal gears are pointless if the parts holding them are plastic.

I got their top of the line 6 qt model ( KitchenAid KP26M1XPM Professional 600 Series 6-Quart Stand Mixer, Pearl Metallic ) because I like to do larger batches of bread dough and pizza dough. (Loved my previous couple KA mixers) The unit burned out in a couple months. I called and they replaced the unit under warranty. The 2nd unit burned out a few months later and when I called them back, they asked how much dough I was making. I told them (IIRC) 5 cups of flour - maybe 6. They said that their mixers are not meant to be used with more than 3 cups of flour per batch. They wanted $150 to provide a 2nd replacement since I was "over capacity" - I declined.

With that low a capacity - and no higher capacity with the larger models, or more expensive models - there's no point in moving higher up their line unless you just need a larger bowl.

Now I have an Electrolux for very large batches of dough and a Hamilton Beach "Eclectrics" for normal mixing. Despite only 400 watts in the HB vs 575 in my Kitchenaid, the HB doesn't have the same small capacity limitations.

Just checked my Amazon history. The KitchenAid was purchased 2/19/08 and the HB was purchased on 12/21/08. So the 2 KitchenAid mixers lasted a combined 10 months, and I've had the same Hamilton Beach for 7 years of fairly heavy use.

 

[nanienamou]

I bought my Kitchen-Aid mixer 16 years ago, 1 year before moving with DH. After a couple of months, it started to sound weird when in use. We decided to exchange it and we are still using the same one since, at least once a week, never had anymore problems. It is kind of heavy and bulky.

 

[CPanther95]

I bought my Kitchen-Aid mixer 16 years ago, 1 year before moving with DH. After a couple of months, it started to sound weird when in use. We decided to exchange it and we are still using the same one since, at least once a week, never had anymore problems. It is kind of heavy and bulky.

My two previous KitchenAid mixers I had before deciding to "upgrade" are still going strong with the people I gave them to. They are probably 15 and 12 years old by now.