I’m thinking of getting a new KA, but wow they make it difficult

M

mariadnoca

Moderator
To compare models. They make an 8qt commercial model for $1k now! Seems the pro line has disappeared and they don’t want you to know about motors or apparently which is the latest models as their own website doesn’t seem current. Honestly, I never considered this was going to be difficult at all. Mostly, I want a mixer that can make smb without it being multiple hours of trying to cool the meringue to the point I can add the butter. Having an upright freezer now helps, but the amount of time it takes is still crazy. Especially when you find out, oops I don’t have enough icing and I need to make more. Now we’re into four hours at least. People that make cakes for a living cannot be going through this and I think my 5 quart tilt head mixer is to blame.

Last time I elected to use a double boiler and not the bowl of my KA mixer as the double boiler thinking this bowl has a footed bottom and lift ones do not. So my thinking was maybe that extra metal holds more heat, but then a larger size would also help the bowl cool down with whipping as well.

I’m scoured the Internet, but I really can’t find anybody talking about the difference of making meringue buttercream w the larger size mixer versus the tilted 5 quart. So it seems I’m going to have to do this testing myself by buying one. I don’t really want the bigger mixer because it does not fit on my counter under the cabinets, which is the reason why I got the tilted head in the first place, but I find myself dreading making cakes now bc I’m spoiled by meringue buttercream, and don’t want anything else. Sigh. Seems I’m going to need to do an in person reconnaissance after my feet heal a little more.
 
maria, I made that Robachelli buttercream last year and it was difficult to fit in my lift arm 5-quart. The first part was fine, but the recipe adds 20 TBL of butter as the last step & it was actually slopping around before it emulsified. If I ever made that recipe again, I would drag out my lift-bowl...which I have no idea of the bowl size, but it's much larger than the lift arm, so I think it's 7 quarts.

However, it still didn't take that long to cool down...here are those steps:

Heat sugar until it reaches 230 F. Mixer (whisk attachment) should be at medium speed. Slowly drizzle the hot sugar into the bowl while the mixer is running. Turn to high speed and test with inside of wrist against the bowl. Beat until bowl is cool to wrist. Switch out whisk for blade attachment and start adding thin, thin slices of butter. Once all the butter is added, turn to medium-high for 20 seconds at most to aerate.

Now, mine was sloppy and sloshy while adding the butter until about 2/3 of the way...when suddenly it emulsified and turned...beautiful.
This recipe is too sweet, but I have to admit it tasted silky on the tongue.

Back to the mixer: an important thing is to look at the wattage. It should say on the box or specification at the sell site. I noticed KitchenAids at Walmart on sale for $280. By looking at the listed model number, I can then google it and see it is 300 watts and 4.5 quarts. My lift-arm is 325 watts (have no clue what the bigger one is...it's in the basement and I'm not going out in the snow to check.) I noticed our Belks department store offers expensive kitchen equipment, but now I check its wattage on Amazon and it's always a cheaper, less powerful model. But at the same high price. I think its for people just buying a gift and not really knowing what they are buying.

Kneading heavier bread doughs made my 5-quart shimmy around a bit. I wouldn't feel safe leaving that sucker alone for 20 minutes.
 
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Gay, that is a good article. The Artisan 5 Qt that I own (since way back when) has a same wattage than it does now (I checked my model (KSM150PSBU) & serial number online = 325 Watts). The BU = model color = Cobalt Blue.
 
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mariadnoca said:
To compare models. They make an 8qt commercial model for $1k now! Seems the pro line has disappeared and they don’t want you to know about motors or apparently which is the latest models as their own website doesn’t seem current. Honestly, I never considered this was going to be difficult at all. Mostly, I want a mixer that can make smb without it being multiple hours of trying to cool the meringue to the point I can add the butter. Having an upright freezer now helps, but the amount of time it takes is still crazy. Especially when you find out, oops I don’t have enough icing and I need to make more. Now we’re into four hours at least. People that make cakes for a living cannot be going through this and I think my 5 quart tilt head mixer is to blame.

Last time I elected to use a double boiler and not the bowl of my KA mixer as the double boiler thinking this bowl has a footed bottom and lift ones do not. So my thinking was maybe that extra metal holds more heat, but then a larger size would also help the bowl cool down with whipping as well.

I’m scoured the Internet, but I really can’t find anybody talking about the difference of making meringue buttercream w the larger size mixer versus the tilted 5 quart. So it seems I’m going to have to do this testing myself by buying one. I don’t really want the bigger mixer because it does not fit on my counter under the cabinets, which is the reason why I got the tilted head in the first place, but I find myself dreading making cakes now bc I’m spoiled by meringue buttercream, and don’t want anything else. Sigh. Seems I’m going to need to do an in person reconnaissance after my feet heal a little more.
Click to expand...
Hi Maria-
This is a really comprehensive review from a home baker. I thought the pros and cons for the different brands were well presented. I bought the Bosch Universal from Finer Kitchens back in the day. (yikes! Is my mixer almost 20 years old?) I bought it based on comparing motor wattage, and it hasn't let me down. Not very sexy looking, but a workhorse. The Ankasarum and Ooni are pretty sleek looking. It's a fun read.
amybakesbread.com

The Best Stand Mixer for Bread Bakers — My Honest Review

Here’s my no-fluff review after years of baking with every major mixer brand.
amybakesbread.com amybakesbread.com
 
Good Foods said:
Maria, Found this
mixitbakeit.com

KitchenAid Mixer Comparison: Which Stand Mixer Fits You Best?

Confused by all the KitchenAid models? This KitchenAid mixer comparison and stand mixer chart explains bowl size, power, price, and value so you can choose the right one.
mixitbakeit.com mixitbakeit.com
Click to expand...
This has good info, but still has same issue bc ka has changed the 7qt build several times recently so can’t find definitive info on that. Here is says dc motor and in a different section says it’s an ac motor. At one point the 7 quart had the same 1.3 hp DC motor that the 8 quart has, now that seems to have changed?, it was also touted as having all metal gears - don’t know if it still does, but I can’t find definitive info on the seven qt. Most only compared wattage, which is how much power a unit draws, but that has nothing to do with torque. America’s test kitchen talks about this in their review and gave the Ankarsrum the Best Buy and the KA came in second.

One of the earlier versions of the 7 quart also came with all stainless steel, beaters, whisk, etc. and it doesn’t appear that the current seven qt does. I’ve seen so much back-and-forth on all these things that I can’t seem to find what the current model is. Not even on the KitchenAid website itself. It has conflicting info when you drill down.

it would’ve been helpful if they changed the names when they changed the guts, this first happened when they got rid of the pro model, but it seems there’s several versions that just go under the name 7 quart.

there’s a whole side hustle industry where people are buying the 1.3 hp motor and upgrading their lift models on YouTube.
 
marilynfl said:
maria, I made that Robachelli buttercream last year and it was difficult to fit in my lift arm 5-quart. The first part was fine, but the recipe adds 20 TBL of butter as the last step & it was actually slopping around before it emulsified. If I ever made that recipe again, I would drag out my lift-bowl...which I have no idea of the bowl size, but it's much larger than the lift arm, so I think it's 7 quarts.

However, it still didn't take that long to cool down...here are those steps:

Heat sugar until it reaches 230 F. Mixer (whisk attachment) should be at medium speed. Slowly drizzle the hot sugar into the bowl while the mixer is running. Turn to high speed and test with inside of wrist against the bowl. Beat until bowl is cool to wrist. Switch out whisk for blade attachment and start adding thin, thin slices of butter. Once all the butter is added, turn to medium-high for 20 seconds at most to aerate.

Now, mine was sloppy and sloshy while adding the butter until about 2/3 of the way...when suddenly it emulsified and turned...beautiful.
This recipe is too sweet, but I have to admit it tasted silky on the tongue.

Back to the mixer: an important thing is to look at the wattage. It should say on the box or specification at the sell site. I noticed KitchenAids at Walmart on sale for $280. By looking at the listed model number, I can then google it and see it is 300 watts and 4.5 quarts. My lift-arm is 325 watts (have no clue what the bigger one is...it's in the basement and I'm not going out in the snow to check.) I noticed our Belks department store offers expensive kitchen equipment, but now I check its wattage on Amazon and it's always a cheaper, less powerful model. But at the same high price. I think its for people just buying a gift and not really knowing what they are buying.

Kneading heavier bread doughs made my 5-quart shimmy around a bit. I wouldn't feel safe leaving that sucker alone for 20 minutes.
Click to expand...
Wattage is the only thing they talk about on ka website, but on the Americans test kitchen review of mixers they said that is only how much power it draws and doesn’t speak to the motor and they go into the motor/torque being the most important, which is where I’m running into problems to find data on because it seems like just in the past several months the 7qt has had different builds.

Also, I’m pretty married to my SMB recipe. I’ve made other versions of it and not only have I noticed, so have guests. I use sweetpolita’s version - she of the famed best chocolate cake recipe several of us here like.

She notes whip meringue till the bowl is cool to the touch “about 10 minutes“ so I’m thinking she has a bigger bowl so she must have the KA lift model and since she mentions till the bottom of the bowl is cool, she also must be using the lift model because the tilted model has all that extra metal which could be retaining heat. Cause this doesn’t take me 10 minutes this takes me hours. I’m whipping like 30 minutes and then packing the bowl in ice. I used to sit the bowl in my ice cream frozen bowl. The last time I put the bowl in my freezer for 10 minutes took it back out re-whipped it still not cool to the touch rinse and repeat and it took a couple of hours before I could get the whipped bowl of meringue cool to the touch.

So, I’m thinking I need the bigger bowl so it has more room/less heat retention to cool down. But that bigger motor with more torque might have something to do with it as well. So I thought get the bigger model, but also the bigger dc motor and finding this information is proving to be the challenge.

Here is her recipe:
sweetapolita.com

Swiss Meringue Buttercream Demystified

I've received so many emails and comments asking about the ever-intimidating Swiss Meringue Buttercream (let's call it SMB), that I thought it may help to run through how to make this glorious not-too-sweet and satiny-smooth delight. Warning: this is a very wordy post, and it's seriously lacking...
sweetapolita.com sweetapolita.com
 
monj said:
Hi Maria-
This is a really comprehensive review from a home baker. I thought the pros and cons for the different brands were well presented. I bought the Bosch Universal from Finer Kitchens back in the day. (yikes! Is my mixer almost 20 years old?) I bought it based on comparing motor wattage, and it hasn't let me down. Not very sexy looking, but a workhorse. The Ankasarum and Ooni are pretty sleek looking. It's a fun read.
amybakesbread.com

The Best Stand Mixer for Bread Bakers — My Honest Review

Here’s my no-fluff review after years of baking with every major mixer brand.
amybakesbread.com amybakesbread.com
Click to expand...
I like these and atk made the ankasarum their top pick, but I’m really just trying to get my smb too cool quicker. My current ka works fine for everything else.
 
I first read this for model comparison and thought, oh easy, I want the 7qt pro…

momsbakingco.com

The Strongest KitchenAid Mixer: The Mighty 5

KitchenAid stand mixers are on every baker’s must-have list of kitchen appliances. Regardless if you are an amateur baker looking for your first stand mixer, or a seasoned pastry chef looking for something much bigger, I guarantee KitchenAid has the perfect machine for you.
momsbakingco.com momsbakingco.com
 
Ah. I wasn’t trying to get you to change your favorite recipe…I was just listing the steps of mine leading up to the temperature issue. My buttercream heats the sugar to a high temperature syrup. Yours heats the eggwhites and sugar. Yet mine cooled down in less than 10 minutes. Are you heating the KA bowl with the bain marie? Or using a separate bowl and then transferring the 160 degree eggs to the KA?

We will figure this out!
 
I just want to say 'thank you' to all who have contributed. I've made SMB a handful of times and it has taken FOREVER to cool down in my KA so I haven't done it much. I think I've heated my KA mixer over simmering water until the very last time and it was better. But it hasn't converted me to using only it.
 
i was using the ka bowl to heat, but this last time used my double boiler and transferred the hot sugar mix to the ka. It didn’t help as much as I hoped.

What size KA bowl were you using when it cooled after 10 mins? And what amount does your recipe make?

I was using my 5qt tilt head KA, and my recipe yields 10 cups of buttercream.

Yes Deb, same! and I’m determined to figure this out. People do this as a business, and they can’t be dealing with how much time it takes (for us anyway).
 
Hi maria,

I was using my 5 quart lift head KA (325W). Here is the Robicelli French Buttercream recipe. It doesn't specify the final quantity. However, I thought it was too sweet so I ended up adding 10 oz of 72% chocolate and 4 oz of unsweetened chocolate

1 c water
2 c (400g) sugar
2 TBL (40g) corn syrup
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
5 egg yolks (100 g)
1 whole egg (70g)
1/8 tsp xanthan gum
1.5 lb (20 TBL) (680g) butter

I had enough for 24 cupcakes + extra.
Click on this link to see the original buttercream in the bowl and then with the additional chocolate on the cupcakes.

Robicelli's French Buttercream icing

It's been a while since I made buttercream icing (French, Swiss, Italian) and had lost my confidence that it would work out. But I followed their cartoon instructions (yes...out of the entire cookbook, the MAIN recipe is drawn out like a cartoon) and it worked. French buttercream uses 1 whole...
recipeswap.org recipeswap.org

Sweetapolita's recipe is close in sugar and butter.

Here's what I think: French buttercream of "hot sugar water" gets added FIRST to a mass of eggs and then beaten to cool touch. That mass helps cool down the sugar liquid faster before adding the butter.
But Swiss recipe requires hot sugared egg whites to cool down ONLY with time and mixer beating before adding the butter >> longer time.

Ingredients​

  • 10 large egg whites (~300g)
  • 2½ cups (500g) granulated sugar
  • 3 cups (680g) unsalted butter, cut into cubes and cool, but not cold
  • 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon (20ml) pure vanilla extract
  • a pinch of salt
 
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Hummm. Maybe? But so many bakeries use smb, they can’t all be having this issue, and the sweetpolita recipe says it takes about 10 mins too cool. My only thought here is since she’s a serious baker (and professional selling) she probably has the bigger KA at home. (Assuming her directions would not be for a Hobart/etc in her commercial kitchen.)

Your recipe is nearly 50% less of eggs, but has 236g + of water. 100 g less sugar not counting the corn syrup. Sweetpolita makes enough to fill and cover a 8/9” 3 layer cake. So maybe the volume is a bit less in yours and mine needs a bigger bowl to cool? This is what vexes me.
 
From google searches Sweetapolita recommends 6 qt bowl for large batches...and her images are all lift-bowl.
  • Capacity Needs: While a 5-quart mixer works for most, she recommends a 6-quart mixer for larger batches of frosting and cookie dough to handle the volume and provide more power.
  • This was odd: in "Sweetapolita's 50 tips" she says egg whites are 37g each...so qty of 10 for buttercream would be 370g. Yet her recipe says 300. Maybe eggs changed size between one article and the other?
My lift-bowl is a 7-quart. Eggs were cheap ($1.98) so I'm going to test out the cooling time in that bowl. I'm going to warm the eggs in a separate bowl and then add them to the KA bowl to cool down. I'll start timing then.

WHAT do you do with all your yolks??
 
marilynfl said:
From google searches Sweetapolita recommends 6 qt bowl for large batches...and her images are all lift-bowl.
  • Capacity Needs: While a 5-quart mixer works for most, she recommends a 6-quart mixer for larger batches of frosting and cookie dough to handle the volume and provide more power.
  • This was odd: in "Sweetapolita's 50 tips" she says egg whites are 37g each...so qty of 10 for buttercream would be 370g. Yet her recipe says 300. Maybe eggs changed size between one article and the other?
My lift-bowl is a 7-quart. Eggs were cheap ($1.98) so I'm going to test out the cooling time in that bowl. I'm going to warm the eggs in a separate bowl and then add them to the KA bowl to cool down. I'll start timing then.

WHAT do you do with all your yolks??
Click to expand...
Oh awesome information research! Thought she had a lift bowl model, but couldn’t swear to it, her recipe says whip till bottom of bowl is cool to touch, wish she gave an actual temp, but oh well. Thank you for deciding to test this!!!

I make curd with the yolks, but pots de cream would be another option. Usually something easy like that I can toss in the vitamix.
 
alrighty...here's the swiss buttercream test data, based on Sweetapolita's recipe, my 425 W, 5-quart KA lift bowl.

Maria, I definitely think it's your mixer. This didn't take anywhere near the times you mentioned.

  • 12 min, 30 seconds to heat sugar/eggs to 140 degrees. Used glass bowl over pasta pot.
  • Moved eggs to mixer. Started beating with whisk; it took 17 minutes to cool to 82 degrees. Bowl had little heat after 7 minutes...and I would have started adding the butter at 10 minutes, but the meringue was still hovering around 85-86 degrees. Online query said meringue should be 68-80 degrees before adding butter, rather than specifying how the bowl feels.
  • Switched to paddle. Took 5 minutes to add all the butter.
  • At 8 minutes, icing was not emulsifying, so took Sweetapolita's suggestion and refrigerated bowl for 15 minutes.
  • Started beating again at higher speed and icing emulsified at 3.5 minutes.
It is still not as smooth as I remember, so perhaps I should have kept beating it. Haven't made this in over a decade.
Now I have to figure out what to do with it.

First image is meringue before butter. Second is butter after emulsifying.

1770682786099.jpeg 1770682805066.jpeg
 
Lawd, thank you!!!
You confirmed I need a new, bigger mixer! I will say my tilt head does most things fine, but it just can’t do this. Btw, if you whip a bit longer it should smooth right out.

While I was researching, last week KA’s deal of the week was refurbished mixers, but oddly 98% said “coming soon” so I clicked send me an email (which I haven’t got) when it comes available. I chose the 8qt commercial bc attachments are ss vs coated and it was only $25 more, at over 50% off. (Either way a lift model will have to live in the garage.) Also, 90% sure I can use smaller bowls (one online said she used her 7qt bowl w it). Once I thought to click all the lift mixer options, the deal page was gone.

They are coming out w their “color of the year” mixer in a few days, so maybe they will have something on sale soon.

May I suggest the sweetpolita dark and dreamy cake to pair this with? This icing with that cake always gets rave reviews. For me this icing recipe just covers a three layer 8 inch cake with no embellishments. I’ve also halved this cake recipe and done it in 3, 6-inch pans. (I was too frugal to buy 6 inch pans. I took 8 inch aluminum grocery store pans and folded them into 6 inch.) I haven’t frozen this cake long-term, but I did freeze it overnight before traveling with it last time and it didn’t affect the taste at all. She does have a version to make cupcakes out of this recipe, and I’ve made those as well, but the icing with this cake is so good. I feel it’s better as a layer cake.

sweetapolita.com

Dark & Dreamy Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake

Happy New Year, friends! Did you bake yourself into oblivion during the holidays? Are you pepperminted out? I can never be, although I ate my weight in peppermint bark several times. While I know we all likely exceeded our chocolate quota for 2015 (or maybe just me), it's a new year, and a fresh...
sweetapolita.com sweetapolita.com
 
Yes, I’ve seen it!!! Not in person, but thought oh they didn't have pink when I got my tilt head. The other thing is apparently most/all? of the finishes except the candy apple red, are all now matte instead of shiny enamel. Huh. Not sure how I feel about that. Will need to see one.
 
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