Monday, December 29, 2008

Adventures with my New Kitchen Aid Mixer

I have wanted a Kitchen Aid Mixer for a long long time. The first Mixer I ever witnessed was at my good friend, Jill’s, house when we were kids. Her mother, Amy, used to throw a holiday party every year with an amazing assortment of homemade goodies. She owned her own pastry business for a time and still to this day makes the most delicious cream puffs ever created. (I dream of those cream puffs.) I remember her making chocolate chip cookies in her red Kitchen Aid mixer and thinking to myself, “this must be why her cookies are so good.”

This Christmas, Evan gave me a brand new Kitchen Aid Mixer of my very own. He always gets me the best gifts. I was so excited to try out a new recipe. I looked for one that required a lot of mixing on all different speeds. The Mixer came with a book with a few recipes and I picked the Double Chocolate Pound Cake. I haven’t done very many cakes from scratch and have never made a pound cake. This recipe was definitely an adventure.

The recipe required 5 different speeds be used during the mixing process. The most hysterical step was mixing in the eggs. The directions read, “Turn to Speed 2 and add eggs, one at a time, mixing about 15 seconds after each addition.” I cracked the first egg and when I went to drop it in the mixing bowl, the Flat Beater hit my hand and my egg went flying onto the counter. You really have to time it just right when dropping eggs in while the beater is going. It was a high stress egg drop, but I got all the eggs in with only one casualty.

After my batter was all mixed up, I underestimated the size pan that I needed. I poured ¾ of the batter into my loaf pan and it was way too much. I put it in the oven for 5 minutes and it over flowed and leaked all over the bottom of the oven. Evan helped me transfer the batter to a bigger loaf pan, but I was worried that it had already partially cooked. We went with it anyway. Next time I will read the last line of the recipe so that I know what size pan I need before I start.

The cake was probably the worst cake I’ve ever had. It was so dry, it was almost inedible. I don’t care though. It was so fun using the mixer that it didn’t bother me that the recipe didn’t turn out. I can’t wait to mix up something else.

3 comments:

Kanani said...

Ah.... it looks like you even got the big Kitchen Aid. I have the smaller one! There's this part --a plastic shield with a chute that you can put on the mixing bowl that allows you to add ingredients while mixing without getting splattered! It works really well.

Anonymous said...

A woman I work with got a kitchen aid mixer for Christmas... she was all google eyed talking about what she was cooking up.. you go girl..
j~

Dorkys Ramos said...

Aww I probably would've screwed up too, but it sounds like a fun toy regardless! Good luck on your next tries.