My favorite hand mixer!

My husband and I do a lot of cooking, and we really put our kitchen appliances through the wringer. Not that long ago I finally had to replace my old Sunbeam hand mixer. The first thing I stumbled across was a KitchenAid, and I love KitchenAid, so that's what I bought. I'm happy I did!

A quick word of warning first. There'll be a sticker on the box that'll tell you what color the mixer is. I missed that sticker, and thought the picture on the box represented the color of the mixer. I was wrong. This is how we ended up with, not the nice white mixer we thought we were getting, but a fire-engine red mixer. Oops! At least it doesn't show the spills as easily.


A couple of nifty new features

First, there's an on-off rocker switch at the bottom corner of the mixer. This means that you cannot accidentally set the thing so that it'll come on the moment you plug it in, as long as you remember to use that switch. Very handy!

Next, this thing is digital. Instead of pushing a dial, you push a button (very easy to do with the hand holding the mixer). Speeds go from zero (off) to seven. You just push the up arrow once for each number value that you want to increase the speed by, and the down arrow to reduce it. The great thing is that there's a "stop" button, so you can instantaneously go from whatever speed you're at to zero - much quicker and easier than moving a switch or dial around.


The beaters

The beaters deserve their own mention here. They're more like the wire whips you'll find in stand mixers, except shaped like normal hand mixer beaters. In other words, no more flat blades. What does this mean? Well, a couple of things.

For one, they're much easier to clean. They also leave more of whatever you're mixing behind in the bowl - which, while a disappointment to the child or spouse who wants to lick the mixer blade, is rather nice.

It does mean, though, that sometimes you have to do a little extra mixing, or turn up to a slightly higher speed, to get things as well-mixed as before. But this is only barely a problem - the positives far outweigh it. It also means that the beaters are less likely to get bogged down and stuck by thick batters, after all.


A few details

The big gray eject button is easy to use, even for my tendonitis-stricken hands. The beaters, oddly enough, are no longer interchangeable, but it's easy to tell from the simple diagrams (found right next to the beater holes on the bottom of the beater) which goes in which spot.

This mixer has stood up to months of the toughest things we can throw at it, and no sign of troubles. It's easy to clean and quite sturdy.


The mixer is lightweight, easy to use, safe, good-looking, and very handy. I highly recommend it for kitchen tasks that don't require the power of a stand mixer.