My New Mixer

Today we have a slight diversion from the usual baking to give a review on my new mixer. As you may, or may not, know it was my birthday this week. As a present my WONDERFUL husband decided to get me a new stand alone mixer.

We decided on an Andrew James mixer as they are so much cheaper than the competitors on the market but have really good reviews. It has a powerful motor with a capacity of 1500W (ignore the title on Amazon, it's wrong!), I wanted something powerful enough to manage all my tasks and this seemed to meet the mark.

I was very excited when this arrived, just 1 day after I ordered it, it arrived so quickly and on my birthday too.

New mixer all packaged up

I couldn't wait to open the box and explore the contents.... 

Contents revealed

I chose the red model to match our kitchen and kettle and because it's so beautiful. The red is a lovely metallic colour, rich and deep. 

The mixer has a large 5.2L bowl made from stainless steel. It feels nice and solid, however, it doesn't have a handle so this makes it slightly tricker to get in and out of the machine. It locks into the machine through a twist and lock system so just twists in and out. 

The machine comes with 4 different mixer attachments. Here are 3 of them. 

Mixer attachments

The attachments are a dough hook, balloon whisk, Aluminum beater blade and a flexible beater blade. This means that the machine is capable of a variety of task including beating egg whites, cakes and bread. The instructions recommend using the flexible beater for sticky mixes as it pulls it away from the sides, whereas the aluminum blade is for stiffer mixes. 

The attachments attach by pushing into the machine and then twisting into place, this is very easy to clip in and out but will mean holding a dirty beater to extract it after mixing so could get messy!! Online there is some criticisim that the attachments don't reach down to the bottom or the sides of the bowl, having tried it out I can confirm this is the case.

Middle mixed but not the outside

This picture shows how the middle is mixed but the outside is untouched. All this needs is a quick mix around with the handlily included spatula. I also found that once I'd increased the speed slightly it pulled the mix away from the sides better. I was making pastry and once I'd added the liquid to the mix it pulled together nicely and combined well. 

Well mixed pastry

I have now tried the mixer with a the flexi mixer making a cake recipe. I was really impressed with how the machine firstly coped with creaming together the margarine and sugar and then later how it coped with combining the whole mixture. I did scrape it off the sides but only a very small amount wasn't mixed in. The mixture was really light and fluffy, I will certainly be using this attachment more frequently as it really did the job. 

Very well mixed margarine and sugar with the flexi mixer

The mixer stayed firmly in place on the side, even when at high speed and I didn't find it overly noisy or obtrusive. 

The machine comes with a splash guard, which I was please about as this would prevent icing sugar scattering the side as it does currently!! The instruction book explained how this came off, however, it was so stiff when it arrived it took the combined effort of me and my husband to get it off. Now that it's come off once it is much loser and more usable now. 

The cost, the mixer cost under £100 coming in at £79.99 not including postage. This is an excellent price for a product of this standard and made it much more affordable. Any equivalent products are well over the £100 mark. It isn't an all singing and dancing machine, it does the basics but this is all I wanted and needed it for. 

So a quick summary:

Pros: An affordable product

High power capacity (1500W)

4 Attachments covering a variety of tasks

Beautiful colour

Cons: Doesn't mix all the way down to the sides when using the aluminium mixer but does a good job with the flexi mixer. 

I would recommend this product to anyone that asked, it does the job and makes tasks much easier. I'm looking forward to many more products in it.