A Dream Come True!!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Lifelong heirloom quality, large batch capability, professional look, how can you go wrong?

Cons: The hub knob seems to be a little iffy...

The Bottom Line: 
I would highly recommend this to anyone who needs the capacity to do large batches on a regular basis. Maybe a little cumbersome for the everyday cook, try smaller versions.

Author's Review
I started professional cake baking/decorating after I started having children. I always wanted to make creative and fun birthday cakes for my kids, so I read a lot of cake decorating magazines, tried some stuff out to figure it out and learned quite a bit on my own. So much so that people started asking me to do cakes for their kids/spouses/friends/relatives/etc. It didn't stop there...I soon was doing cakes for pretty much any occasion you can think of, and every time someone would ask: "Can you do (______)--fill in the blank--?" I would simply say, I can figure it out, until finally I decided to actually take a course in professional dessert making.

This gave birth to my part time (can't be much more since I am a homeschooling, at home mom to 4 kids ages 3-7) business of baking and decorating cakes, and other baked goods get thrown in during the holidays.

Now all this is a preface to the fact that this business started with me packing up all of my ingredients, pans and my trusty old HAND MIXER to go do my baking at friends' homes whenever I had a cake to do because I didn't have an oven in my own home that worked. My one friend who allowed me to use her home/kitchen for my very late night baking adventures talked to me quite often and heard me dreaming out loud about how some day I was going to have a KitchenAid, and an oven that worked. Making that batter--what with having to cream the butter and sugar, and then whip the egg whites--by hand, even with a hand mixer, was very tiring.

I had seen the infomercial on tv lots of times, and although I had never actually owned a KitchenAid stand mixer before, I had been blessed to use one a time or 2, and I knew that this was a brand, and a machine I would be able to pass down to my daughter someday.

My friend would innocently ask which model I was looking at, and I would reply, "The Professional 6!" because I knew I would need large capacity for the cake batters I do. Well, long story not so long, I was blessed by this friend with surprise birthday party a couple of years ago, where she and a bunch of other friends went in together to present me with my dream mixer!

Now I *DID* have to replace it right away, but only because of a mistake I made--not anything wrong with the machine. I had not made sure the bowl was locked down in the proper position and started it up, the beater kept jamming on the side of the bowl which was in the wrong position, and the motor actually died. Well I called customer service, they referred me to a local repair center where I could take it and have it taken care of, but since it was only 1 or 2 days old, I opted to just pack it back up and take it back to the store where they had purchased it.

I was able to exchange it with no problem. I brought home the new machine and have been using it to make cake batters, brownies, cookies, icings, etc. ever since. I also use it to mix up my homemade mashed potatoes. I have *not* attempted to make bread dough yet, since I have a bread machine that mixes the dough and then bakes it in one easy step. I have, however made cake batters that used 15 sticks of butter and 3-3 1/2 dozen eggs, with 6 cups of sugar. I add the flour separately by hand, so the 12 cups of flour would not affect it. I also have done batches of icing that use 2 pounds of shortening with 4 pounds of 10X sugar. No problems whatsoever!

The only con I could think of was the fact that the little black knob that turns the screw for the "hub" where the attachments and accessories get attached actually just cracked and fell off in 2 pieces so all I have now is the metal screw thingy. I have no idea why that happened, but since I don't have any of the accessories, it doesn't really affect the day-to-day use of the machine.

I store the beater, the whip, and dough hook inside the bowl with an inverted plate over it to keep out any grease or dust from the stove which is right next to it, which is perfect for the way my kitchen is set up--very small and the little 18-inch counter to one side of my stove is the perfect place for this mixer to have a home.

Mine has the matte charcoal gray finish which looks very professional and fits in with almost any decor I can think of. It is also great because it wipes clean with a damp cloth and still looks new after 2 years and a bit of use.

All in all, I would heartily recommend this machine to anyone with a large family (we are 6 in my household), or who bakes large batches on a regular basis for any reason.