Love baking at home, but not sure what equipment to invest in? Read on as our Test Kitchen team discuss one of our best-loved kitchen gadgets – the stand mixer – to help you decide!

What is it?

A stand mixer is a heavy-duty electric mixer attached to a stand that sits on a countertop. Typically, they come with a removable bowl and a variety of attachments, such as whisks, beaters, paddles and dough hooks, which can be used in various forms of baking.

What’s it for?

Whether you’re mixing cake batter, kneading dough, whisking meringue or making cookies, a stand mixer is there to help you out every step of the way!

What to consider:

Make sure the mixer you opt for can easily fit on your countertop and that you have enough space for it. Stand mixers can be beautiful machines, and you might like to keep yours on display; however, neat machines might be more desirable if you wish to store them away in a cupboard in between uses.

If you’re making a big batch of baked goods, stand mixers are amazing, as you can throw your ingredients into the bowl and leave the machine to do the hard work while you go ahead with the rest of the recipe or multitask to your heart’s content!

If you’re a casual home baker, who looks forward to weekend baking sprees, a smaller machine will do the job. Meanwhile, an avid baker might need something with a bit more juice in it, and a larger machine with a greater capacity might be worth the investment.

What we love:

In our Test Kitchen, we get great use out of our standing mixer, and have really fallen for the KitchenAid Artisan Mini stand mixer from Currys. It has a capacity of 3.3 litres, 10 speed levels and three accessories, including a flat beater, a six-wire whip and a dough hook. Choose the attachment you need and get baking, with a powerful motor that makes mixing and combining ingredients easy.

It does the hard work for you by mixing ingredients as if you were mixing by hand, but more thoroughly and much quicker. Plus, the tilting head design makes mixing, and cleanup a breeze. Simply lift the head up and out of the way when you need to move the bowl or change attachment, and click it back into place after.

The KitchenAid Artisan Mini stand mixer comes with a 3.3-litre stainless steel bowl, ideal for mixing small and large batches of ingredients. The timeless design means you’ll want to keep this stylish kitchen accessory on your countertop every day. Meanwhile, the neat nature of the machine makes it easy to store if needed.

This crowd-pleasing, ultimate coffee cake recipe is the perfect bake for trying out your KitchenAid Artisan Mini stand mixer. Be sure to check it out!

Click here for more information about the KitchenAid Artisan Mini stand mixer from Currys.