There are days I truly love this job — today is one of them. I’ve said before that I don’t accept gifts from people, but I’m always happy to accept them from brands I already use and trust. And few brands have earned that trust more than KitchenAid.
In the last forty years, I’ve owned just two stand mixers. The first was a secondhand one, given to me by a friend in my village, which saw me through eighteen years of supper club cooking — including one repair along the way, handled brilliantly by their customer service. About ten years ago, I bought a second. And now, I’m unboxing a third: the Artisan Plus.
The first thing I noticed unpacking it was the attachments — no enamel coating this time, so no risk of chipping. In restaurant kitchens, a chipped dough hook simply isn’t safe to use, and I went through a couple of the old enamelled ones over the years. This one has a beautiful matte finish in Wild Blueberry, which happens to match my kitchen perfectly. My old KitchenAid has always lived in the cupboard. This one is staying out on the counter — and the old one is being passed on to my daughter, who’s hopefully buying her first house this year.
A few features stood out immediately. It has ten speeds, but more interestingly, two distinct types of speed control: the familiar click-between-settings dial I’ve always used, and a new smooth-turning knob for finer control — genuinely useful for that moment when flour first goes in and threatens to go everywhere. There’s also a light inside the bowl that switches on automatically once it’s lowered into position, and a new attachment I hadn’t seen before — a flexi-edge beater, which scrapes the sides of the bowl as it mixes, so no more stopping to do it by hand.
I am, without exaggeration, more excited about this than I would be about a new handbag. And I think I’ve earned it.
Recipes made with it to follow soon.