Kitchen Aid Artisan Food Mixer - any thoughts on this please?

Mrs_Bones

Hello
As part of my redundancy I've been given some vouchers to spend. I have already decided to treat myself to a new breadmaker as there is the panasonic one in the catalogue that I have heard so much about on this thread. Now I'm wondering what else to get.

There is a KitchenAid Artisan Mixer and while I could never have justified spending the money to buy one, I figured I may with these vouchers, but I wondered what your thoughts were on this mixer. I like baking cakes but normal just use my very old hand blender but with arthritis in my hands even that is getting difficult so thought a mixer might be helpful, but then again I realize I could get one alot cheaper then one of these makes so not sure what to do. What else can you use it for, apart from making cakes, could I use it to make pastry?

horsechestnut

If you have enough vouchers then buy a Kenwood Chef.
You will never be disappointed.
They usually come with a liquidiser and there are also usually offers in January that give extra attachments.
I had my last one for 25 years and have now given it to my son-in-law, so it's still in use.

Pitlanepiglet

I ummed and ahhed between a Kitchen Aid and a Kenwood Chef and in the end bought the Kenwood as it was signifincantly cheaper than the Kitchen Aid especially by the time I had added the attachments that I wanted.

There is a Kitchen Aid Classic model (white only) that they had on Amazon a little while ago which is much cheaper than the Artisan model. From my research it is a common model in the US but rarely seen in the UK, it has a lower motor ourput than the Artisan and I found some reviews that said that the Classic was not up to bread dough on a regular basis. Don't know whether it is true though.

I was worried that I might buy the Classic and its attachements and it not be up to what I wanted and not last long and then I would have needed to buy a replacement Kitchen Aid to be able to use the attachments.

Sooo I went for the Kenwood Chef which I love. It is much noiser than the Kitchen Aid because of the difference in their drive systems.

The one thing I wonder though is how you'd get on with the Kenwood with arthritic hands, I have perfectly normal use of my hands but I find the little "thingie" that you need to operate to lift and lower the head of the machine is difficult to operate with one hand - I have to have two hands free to do it (hope that makes sense). I think the KA mechanism was easier to operate but I'd suggest you find somewhere that you can try both types and see how you get on with lifting the heads and ataching the gadgets.

I also have some trouble getting the top cover off my Kenwood to put attachements on the top (slicer etc.). I found John Lewis had Kenwoods and the Kitchen Aid next to each other so I could have a good play with them.

Sorry to hear about the redundancy, I hope you get through it all OK, perhaps an upside is time on your hands to bake?!

Pink.

Hi Mrs Bones,

Sorry to hear about your redundancy. There's an earlier thread discussing the kitchen aid versus the kenwood chef that might help you to decide:

Food Mixer/Processor/kenwood chef

I'll add your thread to that one later to keep the replies together.

Pink

Mrs_Bones

Thanks everyone for your replies and it's help me to make my mind up not to go for the Kitchen Aid mixer, it did seem alot of money but....

Anyway after reading what you have said on here and looking at other threads and reviews on Amazon, I really fancy the Kenwood Patissier Mixer and that is only a third of the cost of the KitchenAid one. It looks like it will do all I want it for. Just want to see if I can check one out in a shop first because of what Pitlanepiglet said about it may be hard to use with my hands.

The only draw back is that these vouchers I've been given have to be used in this works catalogue and no Kenwoods in there so going to get the families birthday presents with them instead for next year where there's a will there's a way.

Thanks also for the well wishes about my redundancy, yes it is a blow after 20 years and still not sure I've got my head around it, but believe things general work out for a reason. Anyway now I have got time to try and get the house sorted and try to get back into cooking