New Mixer

This is our new mixer! It's a Electrolux Magic Mill DLX Assistent. It has a huge capacity, which I have not even begun to test! I made a small recipe of 2 loaves of bread, and I've made a few big batches of cookie dough. Tonight I made mashed potatoes. I really, really like this mixer. It is different from a typical mixer, like my old KitchenAid. The motor is on the bottom, and the bowl itself is what spins. There is an arm that comes down into the bowl, with a round beater-thing on the end. Then there is a plastic scraper-thing that continually scrapes everything off the sides. I also have a dough hook that attaches in the same hole as the scraper, and also connects to the arm. Most expert DLX users seem to agree that you really don't need the dough hook. The other paddle-beater-thing is supposed to mimic hand-kneading and mixing, and it makes a really good quality bread. This mixer is made in Sweden, but apparently American bakers feel that bread can't be made without a dough hook, so they include one. There is also a smaller plastic bowl and a set of wire wisks for beating eggs.

You can see the scraper on the left and the beater thing on the right. I fix the beater thing however far away from the side I want it, usually pretty close, and then I can manually move it into the middle if I think there is something there that needs to be better incorporated into the dough, and the arm swings back to wherever I locked it.

On the first picture you can see that there are 2 knobs. The one on the left turns it on. I can either click it to just "on", or I can click it farther to the left and choose a time. I can set it to mix my bread dough for 8 minutes, for example, and then it shuts off. The knob on the right is a power knob, so I can just crank up the power if it seems like it is struggling. I guess this is what you use when you are making 12 loaves of whole wheat bread, or some other huge thing. I certainly haven't needed any extra power for the little things I have done--things which totally strained the motor on my KitchenAid!

You can buy a ton of attachments for this thing--grain flaker, sausage-extruder, meat grinder, grain mill, pasta maker, blender, grater, cookie press, etc. Here is a youtube link for a demonstration video. This first part is 9 minutes long and shows most of the attachments. It's really cool how a lot of them hook into the machine--you turn the machine on its side! Here is the link for the second part of the demo video, which is only 5 minutes long.

So hopefully this appliance will last us a very long time!