The Kitchenaid Artisan Makes Cooking a Joy!

KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer
Photo: BenFrantzDale

The Most Versatile Small Kitchen Appliance

To find the most versatile small kitchen appliance, you don't have to look beyond the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer.

Regardless what your kitchen colors are, you will probably find the perfect color, since Artisan stand mixers come in more than twenty colors. My mixer looks like the one in the photo. I love it.

Some come with glass bowls, others with stainless steel bowls. With special attachments you purchase separately, you can use the stand mixers as a grinder, sausage maker, juider, ice cream maker, and much more!

In tough economic times like these, more and more families, including mine, are having to go back to home-cooked meals, instead of eating out.

For every job, whether it be on-the-job, or at home, having the right tool makes doing the work easier and faster.

Can you mix a cake or a batch of cookies by hand? Of course! But it is much more pleasurable to bake a cake or a batch of cookies if you have a tool like the Artisan mixer to do the heavy work for you. And it's faster, too!

Did You Know?
Artisan stand mixers come 

in a large variety of colors!

What Comes with the Artisan Mixer with Pouring Sheild?

Optional KitchenAid Pasta Kit
works on the Artisan Mixer, too!
Photo: Mack Male

When you purchase an Artisan Stand Mixer, you will find included in the box the whip, flat, and bread hook mixer beaters. The wire whip is used for whipping cream or meringue.

The flat beater is used for cake type batters, and the bread hook is for kneading bread after it is mixed using the flat beater.

It will also come with a splatter shield, which prevents batter from splattering your kitchen walls.

The 4, 5, or 6 quart (depending on which mixer you purchase) steel bowl can be placed in the freezer for a while to make it easier to whip up some whipped cream or cream cheese filling.

It can also double as a baking pan to make the skirt of a doll cake. My daughter did this for my granddaughter's birthday cake.

After baking the cake in the mixing bowl, she turned it out top down, and inserted a doll in the center. She used a star tip to add frosting clothes to the doll and to decorate the cake skirt.

The cake was a hit!

Making Cookies in Three Minutes with KitchenAid 

KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer Features

Optional KitchenAid Meat Grinder Attachment

Photo: Jennifer

KitchenAid's Artisan stand mixer is a substantial piece of equipment: 325 watts of mixing power make child's play of creaming butter, kneading dough, and whipping cream.

 The kid in you will appreciate how quick and easy it is to mix up a batch of cookie dough.

The Artisan Stand Mixer comes with three attachments: a flat beater for making batter, meat loaf, and all textures in-between; a wire whip for egg whites, mayonnaise, and more air-infused creations; and a hook for mixing and kneading yeast doughs. All three are solidly constructed and easily secured to the beater shaft with a simple twist.

Giving someone a stand mixer is

like giving them an extra pair of

hands! It makes everything they

mix up easier to make!

This model also includes a pouring shield for guiding ingredients to their proper destination, and the bowl itself locks tight to the base.

Standing about 15 inches high, jutting out a foot, and weighing more than a grown woman's bowling ball, this stand mixer isn't the sort of appliance you'll wipe down and put away. Better to find a square foot of free counter space for easy access; besides, this machine is as pretty as it is rugged.

Optional Attachments Extend the Capabilities of the KitchenAid Stand Mixer

Cookbooks and Bread Recipes for the Stand Mixer

The Complete KitchenAid
Stand Mixer Cookbook

Stand Mixer Recipes

 

While any recipe can be adapted to stand mixers, there are some recipes specifically developed for use with them. KitchenAid, for instance, has several cookbooks. Some of the best are out of publication, but on Amazon, you can often find them used.

I have several favorites, including KitchenAid Best-Loved Recipes, the Ultimate Mixer Cookbook, and KitchenAid 3 Cookbooks in 1, that are no longer in print, but the have some really good recipes in them.

 

What I really like about stand mixer cookbooks is that they tell what specific speed to use in mixing, which mixer blade to use (i.e. wire, bread hook, or flat blade), and how long to mix at that speed. KitchenAid mixers use a different mixing movement than most mixers, so it usually doesn't take as long to mix a recipe as a regular mixer.

 

The bread hook blade, obviously, is used for mixing and kneading bread. The first time I used the bread hook blade to mix my favorite yeast bread recipe, I was thrilled. I had gotten away from baking bread often, since my hands are painful enough that I can't always knead the dough. The mixer does it for me, now. Below, I am including a list of links to some of the best bread recipes I have found online.

Bread Recipes for Stand Mixer Bread

• Stand Mixer Sandwich Bread Recipe
• Crescent Rolls for the Stand Mixer
• Hot Dog, Hamburger, or Hoagie Buns With the Stand Mixer
• Stand Mixer Parmesan Twisty Breadsticks

Do you enjoy making bread in your stand mixer?

Stand Mixers Make it Fun to Bake Cookies: Snickerdoodle Cookie Recipe

Photo: Alcione

Stand Mixers Make it Fun to Bake Cookies!

 

A few years ago, my sister-in-law mentioned that she burned up her mixer before Christmas making divinity. A good friend who baked and decorated cakes for the public had the same thing happen to her mixer a few years back while she was making icing.

In my case, it was cookie dough that caused the demise of my hand mixer. My husband surprised me with a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer to replace the one I burned up. Wow, what a difference. I've used the stand mixer since 2008, and absolutely love the ease in preparing cookie dough and other stiff dough.

Over a recent holiday season, my daughter-in-law and I made dozens of cookie recipes, several bread recipes, and a couple of pies using the mixer.

KitchenAid 5 Qt.
Artisan Stand Mixer

The stand mixer made it possible to continue other food preparation tasks while waiting for the dough to mix. It really is helpful for someone with painful hands and shoulders not to have to mix and stir heavy cookie batters and bread dough. It really does make cooking and baking a joy, again.

A quality stand mixer will out perform and outlast hand mixers. They are heavier and are able to handle heavier batters and dough.

One of the recipes that we used so much over the holidays was the Snickerdoodle Cookies Recipe. Our family loves them so much we are asked to bake them quite often, even when the holiday season has passed. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

 

 

A stand mixer makes it possible to

continue other food preparation tasks

while waiting for the dough to mix.

 

Snickerdoodles Cookie Recipe 

A Great Recipe for Any Occasion!

 

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp Watkins double-strength vanilla
• 1 tbsp Watkins cinnamon, more if desired
• 2 tsp cream of tartar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. In the stand mixer bowl, beat 1 1/2 cups sugar, butter, shortening and eggs until well-blended and smooth. Turn mixer to low speed and mix in flour mixture.

Refrigerate dough, if needed, until firm enough to shape. Shape level tablespoons of dough into 1 1/2" balls. Mix cinnamon and 1/4 cup sugar in small bowl. Roll balls in cinnamon mixture. Place 2" apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned and tops are crinkled. Remove to wire rack to cook. Makes 48 cookies.
 

 

Making Snickerdoodles Makes Memories—Betty Makes Snickerdoodles with Her Grandson Carter

 

 

 

 

What is your favorite cookie recipe? 

 

My KitchenAid Stand Mixer Makes Baking Fun Again

KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer

KitchenAid Stand Mixer - A Baker's Best Friend!

Over the years, I have really enjoyed baking bread and cookies and decorating cakes. I have burned up so many hand mixers, it isn't funny.

Then, when arthritis settled into my hands, I feared I would have to give up baking, especially cookies, breads, and decorating icings that are so difficult to mix.

I still have trouble using an icing bag when making icing flowers or garlands, but mixing the icing is no problem.

The first time I saw KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in action, my daughter made whipped cream for a dessert topping. Light, creamy, and airy! I was impressed. But, when I watched her mix yeast dough in the mixer, I was hooked. The machine would knead my bread for me!

This stand mixer is heavy and powerful enough with 10 speeds to mix heavy bread or stiff bread, cookie, and icing batters. The tilt-back head provides easy access to the mixture in the bowl. The 5-quart bowl locks into place--you don't have to catch this one! A pouring shield with a chute makes it easy to add ingredients. It comes with a flat beater, dough hook, and wire whip.

The stainless mixing bowl cleans up easily. My daughter used her stainless mixing bowl as a pan to bake the skirt of a Barbie doll cake for her daughter's birthday!

I have had this mixer since 2008. This stand mixer has given me back the joy of baking for my family. I chose the empire red color, but with 42 colors to select from, you can easily match your kitchen décor!

Blue Bell Worthy Homemade Mint Chocolate Chip and Coconut Ice Cream

(c) Susan Elliott

Being a Texas girl I must admit I love my Blue Bell ice cream. Sadly, in 2015 there was a great Blue Bell famine across the country. This famine caused a great sense of loss in the ice cream community. 

Of course, to prevent serious ice cream depression, I had to learn to make a homemade ice cream recipe worthy of my favorite store-bought ice cream brand. 

Vanilla Ice Cream Base Recipe

• 1 & 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tablespoon of Vanilla
• 2 cans sweetened condensed milk
• 2 cans evaporated milk

Place 1 & 1/2 cups of sugar in your Kitchen Aid mixer and mix on low. Mix until the egg is well incorporated into the sugar and then add 1-tablespoon of vanilla (I prefer natural Mexican vanilla.) Remove the mixer from the stand.

Add two cans of sweetened condensed milk and two cans of evaporated milk to the egg mixture. Place the mixer back on the stand and beat on low.

Chocolate & Coconut Variation

• 10 - ounce bag Andes' Creme De Menthe Baking Chips
• 1 cup Shredded Cocounut

Add the entire bag of Andes' Creme De Menthe Baking Chips and 1 cup shredded coconut to the basic ice cream mixture. Stir gently.

Putting it Together

Carefully pour the ice cream mix into your Oster Wooden Ice Cream Bucket ice cream maker. (I've owned other ones, but this one is my favorite -- hands down.) Now, add fresh milk to the  max fill line and place the lid on the container.

Fill the bucket surrounding the center container with ice and ice cream salt. I try to layer the ice and salt mix. Cover the top sides with a towel. Be careful to not cover the motor.

The ice cream will take about 1 1/2 hours to set.

–Susan

Do you have a favorite homemade ice cream recipe?

Kitchenaid Pasta Attachments

I have been thinking about going back to basics recently. Don't get me wrong, I have no desire to wash clothes in an iron pot over a campfire. At the same time, it is time to cut back and start doing more for ourselves. With the economy the way it is, I just want to start making more stuff at home. That includes using my Kitchenaid to make homemade pasta.

I don't have the pasta attachment for my Kitchenaid, as yet, to cut the pasta dough, yet. (Are you listening, Santa?) Until then, I will have to use my trusty rolling pin to roll out the dough and cut it into strips for fettucine. Hopefully, that won't be too long, since my hands really bother me if I put much pressure on them. That is the whole reason I have a Kitchenaid stand mixer to start with. I love to bake, especially cookies and breads. These doughs are too dense to mix with a regular mixer--it burns up the motor. With the stand mixer, I can mix up a batch of bread and knead it without pain.

If you are interested in making homemade pasta, visit Kitchenaid Pasta Attachments & Recipes for lots of recipes and how-to videos.

Do you have the Kitchenaid pasta attachment? If so, please comment and let me know how you like it.