the kitchenaid artisan is a 25 pound personality and i would buy it again

At 1:20am on a saturday I was holding a bowl of frosting that had gone wrong, and it had gone wrong because I put cold butter in it, and I knew cold butter was wrong, and I did it anyway. My hand mixer overheated twice. I cried a normal amount. The cake was fine. The frosting was a soup. That was the night I understood I was not bad at baking, I was under-equipped.

The mixer arrived the following february and it has not left the counter since.

the honest bit, black friday included

I paid $349.99 for the artisan 5 quart in pistachio, on black friday 2023, after my mom looked over my shoulder and said "do not pay five hundred dollars for this, wait," and I waited. It list-prices at $499.99 and every november it falls into the three hundreds, which is a rare piece of good news in my receipts folder. Then the attachments happened.

what i actually care about, in order of care

It weighs 24.9 pounds and the weight is the feature. This thing does not walk the counter when it kneads, because it cannot, because it is made of what appears to be the center of the earth. My old hand mixer danced itself off the bowl and into the sink during one specific banana bread. The artisan sits there like furniture. You will carry it exactly twice and then it owns the counter forever, and you should know that going in.

Speed two is the rule and the rule is real. The pamphlet says never knead dough above speed two, and I looked it up because I am a person who tests rules, and the motor strains at speed four the way mine strains at 4pm on a friday. Speed two, a timer, and the dough hook will finish a sandwich loaf while I answer emails. The ten speeds matter less than the two speeds you actually use.

Five quarts is a two person life. This is the honest caveat in every review and it is correct. A single batch of cookie dough is a joy. A double batch climbs the beater, hugs the lid, and tries to escape at the hinges, and I have chased dough across the counter in front of my coworker with the cold brew, who now tells that story at parties. If you bake for a crowd, the bowl-lift model exists and is bigger and costs more and I am not its spokesperson.

The attachments are a toy chest with a motor. The pasta roller came with the mixer on the same receipt and it has produced lasagna sheets that made my dad say a word in vietnamese that was not a compliment but was not an insult either. The ice cream bowl from my sister works and I use it in august when the apartment hits 81 degrees. Every attachment is its own hobby with its own learning curve, and I recommend exactly one at a time, learned the hard way.

The color is the personality, and the color is pistachio. My kitchen is beige and brass and warm light and one plant that is pretending. The mixer is green like pistachio ice cream and it is the only loud object I own, and I have caught myself arranging the whole counter around it, which my design brain pretends is composition and my friends call what it is. Also, kitchenaid just made a spearmint the 2026 color of the year and I am pretending I did not see it.

The noise at high speed is a small airport. Whipping cream at speed eight sounds like takeoff and Mochi, the sensitive one of my two dogs, files a complaint every time. Kneading at speed two is quiet. So the machine has a volume setting for your neighbors, and the volume setting is kneading.

the pasta roller incident 🍝

The first time I used the pasta roller, I had watched one video and skipped the resting part. The dough fought back. It stuck to the rollers, balled up like a fist, and I fed it through anyway, and what came out was a texture science has no name for. My friend Dana, who was there for moral support and wine, said "that's fettuccine?" and I said "that's a lesson," and we ate it with too much butter and salt and it was fine, because pasta dough that has been through something just needs sauce.

Here is the permission part: you are allowed to make an ugly cake and bad fettuccine. The mixer does not grade you. It turns at whatever speed you set and it does not have opinions, which is more than I can say for the group chat.

the soft landing

I keep meaning to try my grandma's poppy seed rolls every december, the ones with the filling that takes a whole afternoon and two days of dough, and every december the wrapping paper and the flights and the one weekend that is never long enough

The truest thing: this is the heaviest object I have ever carried up three flights of stairs on purpose, and it is the only appliance in my kitchen that makes me want to bake on a tuesday, for no one, for no reason, with the good playlist on.

bake the ugly cake

ava