If you love to bake, don't think twice about investing in a stand mixer. You'll find that it creates the fluffiest whipped cream and smoothest cake batters and easily handles dough for dozens of chocolate chip cookies and multiple loaves of bread. And while you'll still have to measure out the ingredients, a mixer makes whipping up baked goods basically hands-free.
Here are our picks for the best stand mixers.
With its iconic design, available in 46 stunning colors — including Orange Sorbet, Green Apple and Dried Rose — the KitchenAid Artisan 5-quart stand mixer is eye candy for your countertop. But it's also a real workhorse that tops almost everyone's list of best stand mixers, due to its fast, efficient mixing and quiet operation. It has the bowl capacity and oomph to mix up nine dozen cookies, four loaves of bread or 7 pounds of mashed potatoes.
It has a Slow Start feature to avoid spattering your counter with a flurry of flour or a splash of milk when it first ramps up. Like all KitchenAid stand mixers, it has 10 speeds and a hub for attaching optional accessories, including a pasta roller and a spiralizer.
If you're short on kitchen space but still want the luxury of a beautiful KitchenAid stand mixer, consider this adorable Artisan Mini model. You can depend on it for the great mixing performance for which the brand is known, but its smaller, 3.5-quart capacity means you'll be limited to making dough for five dozen cookies or just one loaf of bread at a time.
In addition to being smaller, the Mini is lighter weight than other KitchenAid stand mixers, so if you want to stash it away in between uses, it's easier to pull out of and put back into a cabinet or closet. It's compatible with all of the hub attachments, like the ravioli maker, but can't be used with the bowl that turns a KitchenAid into an ice cream maker.
We won't lie. This stand mixer won't dress up your countertop the way a KitchenAid will, but it won't make as big a dent in your budget, either. And you won't sacrifice much in mixing results. This mixer turns out clouds of whipped cream, tender lemon chiffon cake and two tall loaves of whole wheat bread. The Hamilton Beach may take a little longer to mix than a KitchenAid does, but hey, you're not mixing the batter by hand. And when it comes to ease of use, the Hamilton Beach bests them all.
Not only is the speed dial easy to turn, but it also has big numbers, no reading glasses necessary. If you're never quite sure what speed to use, check out the guide matching tasks to speeds right on top of the mixer head. Handles on either side of the bowl make maneuvering the mixer easy, and all of the parts, including the whisk, can be popped in the dishwasher. As the mixer is relatively lightweight and has a handle on top, it's convenient to reposition or carry to a closet for storage.
What distinguishes the Kenmore Elite Ovation stand mixer is the ability to easily add ingredients through a hole at the top of the mixer as it's working. This appliance also has a so-called 360-degree splash guard that virtually eliminates splatters on the countertop, cabinets and your shirt. During mixing, a light illuminates the bowl, so you can tell when all the raisins are evenly distributed or your sponge cake batter is turning pale yellow. The glass bowl is a nice change from stainless steel, but of course, glass is not indestructible.
Breville's Bakery Chef stand mixer is beautifully designed, with a brushed-aluminum finish, and it's chock-full of unique and useful features. As soon as it starts mixing, a built-in counter starts to count up so you know when you've been kneading for five minutes. Or if you prefer, you can set it to stop the mixer after a specific time. A light shines down on the bowl during mixing, making it clear when there are no more streaks of flour in the brownie mixture. You turn a dial to select your speed, and as you turn, a bar lights up showing you what task is recommended at each setting. Load-sensing technology detects when heavy doughs and batters are being mixed and automatically adjust the power.
The mixer comes with a 5-quart stainless steel bowl. In addition to the standard attachments, you also get a scraper beater with a flexible edge that scrapes the bowl as it turns, eliminating the need to stop and scrape to make sure every bit of cornmeal is incorporated into your muffins. However, while the Breville shines at whipping air into egg whites, whipping cream and turning out tender cakes, it has some trouble with bread dough. As it kneads, it "walks" around the counter quite a bit, so you definitely want to keep an eye on it, lest it "jump" right onto the floor. If making bread is your thing, better to choose another mixer.
With this mixer in your kitchen, you can go ahead and double up on recipes; it has the power to handle the dough for six loaves of bread or 72 cookies. At Thanksgiving, it can mash 7 pounds of spuds, leaving you free to carve the turkey and whisk up the gravy. This mixer is big and heavy and is definitely for bakers who bake a lot and bake often and want to give a stand mixer pride of place on the countertop. Of course, you can use all the KitchenAid attachments, from the meat grinder to juicer to the spiralizer, so this device can replace several appliances. That's good, because it's easier to store lots of accessories than several machines.
If your kitchen is practically a factory for bake-sale cookies, this is the mixer model for you. The most powerful stand mixer for home use, it has the horsepower to mix up the dough for 14 dozen oatmeal cookies at once. Its Slow Start feature keeps flour from being spewed around the kitchen at the beginning of mixing. As you may expect, it will set you back more than any of our other picks, and it will occupy a major chunk of countertop space, so be sure you need this appliance before you click Add to Cart.
