Introduction
If you looked at a collection of stand mixers from a distance, there are only a few which you would be able to identify by name. But does that mean that they are the best stand mixers? It depends on what your intentions are. That is to say, whether you are buying it as an item of kitchen furniture, an ornament or whether you have finally decided to become full-time professional cupcake producer!
Nowadays all mixers have lots of design in them but if you are a serious baker, the most important aspect of a is it's functionality and robustness.
- If you are baker, you are no longer just looking for a mixer, but the best stand cake mixer or the best stand bread mixer. That means that the important things such as a sturdy design, a powerful motor and tools which can do the job are at a premium. Pretty colors are a secondary option.
- Stand mixers vary in size and you need to make sure that you have either the storage space or the worktop space to accommodate your new piece of kit.
- You will need three basic tools, which are the dough hook, balloon whisk and a general all-purpose beater. Make sure, if you are a bread maker and intend to make bread more than once every blue moon, that the dough hook is robust, preferably not plastic or crudely cast aluminum. The dough hook has to do more work than any other attachment so it is important that it doesn’t break in the middle of a bread making session.
- Naturally, that brings us to the motor. 500W is the absolute minimum that you should be considering and make sure that if you do intend to use your new mixer often, that there is a lengthy guarantee five years is reasonable.
One of the other aspects of a mixer which is often overlooked is the question of the type of motor. What you don’t want to happen is for you to switch on the mixer with a bowl full of flour etc and find a lot of it deposited on your worktop. That is why many mixers nowadays have a lid (the so-called ‘splash guard’) which can cut down on this but the best solution is to find yourself a mixer with an electronically-controlled ‘slow start’ motor that is one which starts slowly and builds up speed. It will save you having to always start on the lowest speed.
Some cake mixing operations are quite lengthy, so your best bet for the best cake mixer for you, is the one which is not too loud because it will drive you crazy. By the same token read the specifications very carefully because although some mixers do have very powerful motors, you can only use them for a short time because they overheat. The last thing you want is for your mixer to seize up with a dough hook inside a few kilos of bread dough!
Our Top 5 Best Stand Mixer Review
Whether you’re a dedicated home baker, or looking to give a terrific gift to a lover of kitchen gadgets, the array of stand mixers on the market can be dizzying. Before you buy, look through websites offering best stand mixer reviews, and make a list of what you expect from the appliance, how much you wish to spend, and how much the appearance of the stand mixer factors into your decision. Maybe you wish for a stand mixer that can deliver excellent bread dough, or you want a kitchen appliance that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional. In this article, I’ll give you the top five best stand mixer reviews, and look closely at the identifying features of each.
KitchenAid KSM150PSER Artisan Tilt-Head Stand Mixer with Pouring Shield, 5-Quart, Empire Red Review
The KitchenAid Artisan series stand mixers are the focus of many best stand mixer reviews for several reasons, the primary one being that it comes in forty different colors. If you’re looking for an appliance that stands out or blends in, or is available in your favorite color, this is the stand mixer for you. The KitchenAid Artisan mixer is also an excellent producer, with sufficient power and large five-quart bowl size to enable it to make batter for nine dozen cookies at once, or to make dough for four loaves of bread.
Its tilt-head design makes adding ingredients a cinch; it has ten speed settings, and comes with four attachments: a coated flat beater, a coated dough hook, a six-wire whip, and a pouring shield that allows you to add ingredients to the bowl without splashing them around the kitchen. Another nice feature of the KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer is that the mixing bowl has a handle, enabling easy pouring off ingredients into cake pans, and ensuring a firm grip on the bowl so that spills don’t happen.
Cuisinart SM-55 5-1/2-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer Review
If you’re looking for an even larger capacity mixer than the KitchenAid Artisan, consider the Cuisinart SM 55, a staple of best stand mixer reviews. It's five and a half quart bowl and twelve speeds are the top of the line for really serious bakers. Its speed controls offer a slow start, so that ingredients are incorporated slowly, and not splashed over the speed controls also offer a slow start, so that ingredients are incorporated slowly, and not splashed over your countertop and walls. It also has a gentle fold option for delicate recipes that suffer from over-beating. The Cuisinart SM 55 comes with the standard four attachments: a flat mixing paddle, a dough hook, a wire whip, and a splashguard, and offers many optional attachments. Another nice feature of this stand mixer is its fifteen minute countdown timer and auto shut-off. These highlights mean that the Cuisinart SM 55 can be left on its own and designed not to overmix your dough, while you attend to other kitchen chores. It’s a great time saver.
Breville BEM800XL Scraper Mixer Pro 5-Quart Die-Cast Stand Mixer Review
The Breville Scraper Mixer Pro is on the list of best stand mixer reviews for a reason: it has a unique five-quart bowl with a flexible bottom and flexible sides that never needs scraping: its design means that you don’t have to stop the process and scrape the sides down with a spatula. The Breville Scraper Mixer Pro also has a feature called “planetary mixing”, which guarantees evenness of blending, with no pockets of ingredients left in lumps in your batter. This stand mixer does it on its own. It comes with the standard four attachments: a pouring shield, a flat beater, a dough hook, and a wire whip, and has twelve speeds. This is a stand mixer to look at if your time in the kitchen is limited, as its features will save you time and worry. The sophisticated LED displays of the Breville Scraper Mixer Pro display its speeds clearly, and this stand mixer also allows you to set countdown times, displayed on the LED panel, so that your batter or dough is never over-mixed, but always blended beautifully.
KitchenAid Classic Series 5 Quart Tilt-Head Stand Mixer, White (K45SSWH) Review
The KitchenAid Classic Plus isn’t as powerful as the others found in best stand mixer reviews. Its capacity is smaller, at four and a half quarts, and it comes with only three attachments: a coated flat beater, a coated dough hook, and a wire whip, but not the pouring shield that is standard equipment for many stand mixers. Nonetheless, the KitchenAid Classic is an elegant machine for a home baker; it has ten speeds and the usual tilt-head. It does have a very nice 59-point mixing action feature, which means that your ingredients will be mixed thoroughly, and time spent scraping the sides will be minimal. Even with the smaller bowl, you can make batter for seven dozen cookies at once, and the 59-point mixing action ensures that your time in the kitchen won’t be wasted scraping the bowl.
Hamilton Beach 63220 Eclectrics All-Metal 12-Speed Stand Mixer, Sterling Review
The Hamilton Beach 63220 is the most elegant member commonly mentioned in best stand mixer reviews. Die-cast metal in sterling silver blends into even the most gracious of kitchens, and it is as versatile as it is stylish. It comes with a unique mixing head, which travels around the entire surface of the bowl, spinning in a clockwise fashion while the beater spins counter-clockwise. In so doing, everything in the bowl blends thoroughly, and removes the need to scrape down the sides of your bowl with a spatula.It has a pouring shield, a flat beater, a dough hook, and a splashguard, all of which can be washed in the top rack of your dishwasher for easy clean-up. All of the twelve speeds of the Hamilton Beach 63220 start slowly, so that there is never a splatter of unmixed ingredients on your countertop or kitchen walls.
Aucma Stand Mixer 6.5-QT 660W 6-Speed Tilt-Head Food Mixer Review
Aucma’s Stand Mixer is made to enable you hands-free mixing for many various foods, all the way from light egg whites to the thickest of bread dough. It comes with a mighty 660 Watt motor which is great for mixing everyday meals, and the large stainless-steel bowl means you can cook for your entire family at once. The mixer has six speeds, so you can find the one that works the best for your meal. The product comes with a whisk, dough hook, and a mixing beater. It also has a splash guard. The modern design is enriched with a calming blue LED light that serves as a power indicator. And if you don’t want to disturb other household members while you’re in the kitchen, this might be the product for you, as it has one of the lowest operation noises out there.
Dash Stand Electric Mixer for Everyday Use Review
Do you need a compact, lightweight stand mixer that can prepare a huge variety of foods? Then you should consider giving Dash Stand Electric Mixer a try. With this 5lbs mixer that can fit under most cabinets, you can prepare any type of food that requires some mixing, whether that be frosting, dressings, baked goods, or bread doughs. The motorhead is fully tilting, so you can remove the mixing bowl and eject the dough hooks without any issue. This can help you reduce the mess as much as possible. And with the dishwasher safe non-electric parts, cleaning the little mess you make couldn’t be easier.
The mixer has six speeds and works with a 250 Watt motor. This is enough for most regular meals you’ll be making on an everyday basis. The mixing bowl is made from stainless steel so it is rather durable, and with this mixer, you’ll also get a recipe book and access to a recipe database.
How to Pick Best Stand Mixer
Power
The Verona/Magic Mill DLX Mixture is a powerful machine that beats out all of the competition. It is especially designed to make bread dough, has a 12-quart capacity, comes in several appealing colors, and costs less than $1000, which should enable you to buy one and still make your mortgage payments. The problem with this mixer is that you can’t buy it in Canada, but if you’re willing to cross the border and bring it back, then this is the mixer for you.
Of the more readily available best stand mixers, KitchenAid has a new and sensational product. It is part of their Pro Line Series: the KitchenAid 7-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer. With its 1.3 HP engine, it radically outclasses its opponents, and does it with style. No longer does the mixer get overheated after long usage; it stays cool while impressing with long use time, and remarkable torque. It’s stylish, too, coming in four different colors: Frosted Pearl White, Onyx, Sugar Pearl Silver, and Candy Apple Red. Another great feature of the new KitchenAid 7-Quart Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is the size of the bowl; it outpaces others with a seven-quart bowl, sufficient for mixing fourteen dozen cookies at one go. Impressive!
Planetary action
Planetary Action, in a stand mixer, is the ability of the beater to move one way, while the mixer’s drive shaft moves another. If that confuses you, try thinking about the earth in orbit around the sun. The earth spins clockwise on its axis, while rotating around the sun counter-clockwise; it’s this motion that the mixers emulate. In doing so, they are able to touch more points on a mounted bowl than ordinary stand mixers. The KitchenAid KP26M1PSL Professional 600 series stand mixer has the best planetary action of the best stand mixers we viewed. It touches down on the 6-quart bowl at sixty-seven different points, meaning that every last little bit of the batter or dough is incorporated into the mix.
Noise
The Hamilton Beach All-Metal Stand Mixer is reportedly the quietest mixer on the market today. Unfortunately, reviewers don’t think much of the other qualities of this stand mixer: if you’re looking for a great mixer, go elsewhere. If you’re looking for more than just noiselessness, try the KitchenAid Commercial 8-Quart Stand Mixer, which is as versatile as it is quiet.
Accessories
Unquestionably, the stand mixer with the most attachments available is the KitchenAid Artisan Series stand mixer. It comes with regular beaters, a dough hook, and a pouring spout, but you can buy so much more, and make the best stand mixer into a truly versatile machine. Available are a device for transforming your stand mixer into a food processor. There’s another attachment that makes juices and sauces from fresh fruit. You can pare, core, and slice apples with another attachment, another which makes ice cream, one that expertly grinds anything from beef to bread for bread crumbs, and one that turns your stand mixer into a grain mill. It’s a truly multipurpose product.
Slow start
Most decent stand mixers have this option. It’s hard to choose among them, and it’s not a feature that would make or break our decision to buy one. If you want a kitchen free from the splatter of a quick start-up, buy one of the ones we’ve recommended on this list; they all have slow start action included.
Speed options
The Cuisinart SM-70 7-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer has the most speeds of any of the mixers we reviewed and is the best stand mixer in this category. The wide variety of speeds means precision mixing. You can whip up batter at top speed, or fold in delicate ingredients gently at a very low speed.
Color options
If you want your stand mixer to be stylish as well as efficient, the KitchenAid Artisan Series is the best stand mixer of your dreams. It’s an incredibly attractive machine in any color, and with its range of twenty-six different colors, you can match your stand mixer to your kitchen, or buy it in your favorite color. Whatever you choose, this sophisticated machine will add a welcome pop of color, or quietly blend into your surroundings. For fun, you can take a six-question quiz, which claims to reveal the color of stand mixer most suited to you.
Weight
Weight is important. You don’t want your new stand mixer bouncing all over the countertop, and off the edge, as I had happen to me with a bread maker many years ago. It was brand new, and it was heartbreaking. You need a heavy machine to ensure that your stand mixer stays put.
All of the KitchenAid stand mixers guarantee sufficient weight to keep it still on your counter. The KitchenAid Artisan Series consistently comes up at the top of the reviews. Be careful, though – unless you have a dedicated space on your countertop for your stand mixer, you don’t want to buy one that you can’t lift from its storage space to your counter without straining your back. Carry your mixer around the store before you buy it. Can you lift it comfortably? Don’t buy it if you can’t.
In lieu of weight, the Hamilton Beach 63220 Eclectrics Stand Mixer comes with non-slip feet that keep it from jumping around the countertop. I think it’s an idea that other producers of stand mixers will be adding to their products soon.
Warranty
Most stand mixers come with a three-year warranty. Some have warranties for only one year. The top of the crop, however, is the Cuisinart SM-55 5-1/2-Quart 12-Speed Stand Mixer, which comes with a five-year warranty, and online support should you encounter difficulties with your stand mixer.
Last Updated: 27th Dec, 2020
Tumay Kilinc
Co-founder of Reviews By People. I'm here to make your buying decisions easier and save you time. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
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