About.com Rating

The Bottom Line

The Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer is a foodie's dream with its ability to whip, mix, and hook dough and cakes and anything else you can imagine in a recipe.



Pros

• The mixer helps users to easily mix ingredients, especially for doughs, cakes, and cookies.
• With attachments, the mixer can help users to make sausage or pasta.
• The plastic guard helps to keep the kitchen neat while you work.
• Coming in a variety of colors, the mixer is pretty to boot.

Cons

• The pasta maker attachment often gets clogged.
• If you don't have the guard on, you will make a mess.
• The mixer itself - not its parts - can be difficult to clean, especially in the nooks and crannies.

Description

• The Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer comes in a variety of colors, many of which will add pizzazz to your kitchen and inspire you.
• All of the Artisan mixers come with three attachments -- the wire whip, paddle, and hook.
• A plastic guard to keep ingredients in the bowl and the ability to lock the head of the mixer in place are safety features.

Guide Review - Kitchen Aid Artisan Mixer: Pros and Cons

The Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer is useful for people who enjoy cooking and baking. Still, it probably ends up on more bridal registries than necessary. Newlyweds who plan on baking boxed brownies and cakes and not much else don't really need a hefty mixer like this one. They could get by with a simple, more affordable hand mixer.

Foodies, who like to try out new recipes and bake from scratch, are ideal users of the Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer.

They can slowly acquire the attachments and make everything from pizza dough to homemade sausage to chocolate cake.

You have to know how to use the machine to get your recipes to turn out right. You must know when to mix on full blast and when to slowly stir. You won't get a great baked good if you don't know when to mix in the dry ingredients with the wet or how slowly to include the eggs. The mixer can only do so much for you.

If you are adept at cooking, you can make the mixer work well for you. The plastic guard, which prevents your ingredients from flying out of the bowl when the mixer is working its magic, keeps you tidy. The different basic attachments -- the wire whip, hook, and paddle -- each do its own job and give the chef versatility. Use the hook for bread dough, the wire whip for fluffier eggs, and the paddle to make the perfect cookie dough.

Another benefit of the Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer is the speed levels. You can go nice and slow or kick things up a notch on one of the higher levels. This is important because sometimes you need to slowly add and combine ingredients and sometimes you need to create a mini tornado in the bowl. For instance, you need a fairly high speed to make your own whipped cream, but you need to go nice and slowly when combining the dry ingredients to the wet for your peanut butter cookies.