Do I need a food processor? for baking

I wouldn't be without mine now. I did do everything by hand, and I've got to admit that cleaning the thing can be a pain if you don't have a dishwasher, but for ease and speed you can't beat one.

I'd wholeheartedly recommend any Kenwood Chef. They're solidly built and very reliable.

I've got a Kenwood FP180 which Amazon very recently had on offer at £29.95 (from £35) and since it's over nineteen quid the delivery is free.

I'm about to shred half a pound of beetroot for the chocolate beetroot cake and I'm blowed if I'd even dream of trying to do that by hand!

It's in the MEGA Index >>> Cooking. Listed in the "cakes" area.

Edit: Sorry, just seen your post count. Welcome to Old Style.

At the top of the listing for the Old Style Forum there are some posts with stick pins in them. One of them is called "The MEGA Index Thread" or something

There's also lots of good info in our "Welcome" sticky which you can either find at the top of the board or by clicking on the blue Welcome in my signature below...

Thanks Squeaky.

I really am new to this. I didn't realise just how big this all is.
I'm never going to get any work done now. Too many places to explore.

Rikki.

Hi Rikki, Oldstyle is magic


Swizzle, I use my Food Processor for just about EVERYTHING , chopping, mixing, the works. For baking I usually combine everything up until the flour stage and then I combine by hand as things seem to get a wee bit dense if you fp the flour.

I don't use my dishwasher (there's only me, it's tiny and it seems such a waste) but I find REALLY hot soapy water and a brush clean up the bits very quickly and easily (ready for the next recipie for batch baking days!).

My Mum on the other hand (who was an uber baker when my brother and I were still at home) used electric beaters (a whisk thing) for all her baking forever and wouldn't go near an FP with a bargepole.

I think it depends what else you want to do with it; if it's just baking then there are other tools that might be better. If you want to make meatloaf, breadcrumbs, etc then you'll find it multipurpose useful.

As greenlogo says, you might want to look at other help if you only want to bake but if you are doing other things a processor might be useful. As far as baking goes I use the food processor for a Nigella shortbread recipe, and for making a huge bag of crumble topping I keep in the freezer.

The hardest work in most cakes/biscuits is the mixing - rubbing in (butter in to flour) is often recommended to be done by hand, and creaming (sugar in to butter) is easy if the fat is very soft. I try to put the butter in to a glass bowl with a glass saucepan lid and leave it somewhere sunny, it very quickly goes soft and is then easy to cream. When I visit my mum I use her handheld mixer and if I had room, I would buy one of those, as it is useful for cream and meringues as well and is easy to clean up.

If you are very new to baking I would highly recommend the book Basic Basics Baking by Marguerite Patten. It's about £6, paperback, and gives you a lot of detail on techniques as well as basic recipes. I probably use it every week :-)