If you like making Soup

[petek]

Jon, with the Bosch mixer, the bowl remains stationary locked to the base. The standard bowl is much like a bundt pan with the tube up the middle, the dough hook and/or whisk latch onto the top of the tube, which has a drive rod going down it into the motor base. The dough hook and or whisks then rotate around inside the bowl, one on each side. The standard bowl will handle 10 cups of flour. There's an optional bread bowl that has dough hooks only and no center post so that it can take up to 12 cups of flour. Braun mixers have a gear driven bowl and stationary beaters/hooks but they're not heavy duty for large amounts.
You pretty much have to order Bosch mixers over the internet from independent authorized dealers.. Mountain Top Milling etc. They're not sold in department stores.

 

[brisnat81]

K vs Whisk

On the kenwoods, the Whisk is for anything that you want to incorporate air into. IE Cream, egg whites, cake etc.

The K beater is for custards, creaming butter and sugar, folding flours in etc.

 

[sudsmaster]

I would think a good way to make a light cake would be use the whisk to beat the egg whites first, then gently fold them into the batter.

I once made a batch of pancakes that way, and they nearly floated off the griddle.

 

[foraloysius]

Jon,

That's a very nice KitchenAid. For pound cake batters I would use the balloon wisk. Start with the eggs and sugar, add melted butter and after that the flour and other ingredients. The batter is a bit thinner when you use this method instead of the method that starts with the unmelted butter and then adding the sugar etc.

Next time I visit you we will have to do some baking, I would love to try those mixers!!! Until now I have never used a standmixer with a planetary mixing action. I am deprived!!! LOL

 

[tomturbomatic]

Louis, our pound cakes start with creaming the shortening/butter and sugar, then beating in the eggs, one at at time, then alternating the additions of flour and liquid. Your method is more like a genoise.

Years ago there was a letter in the food column of Southern Living asking why pound cakes were boiling over during baking. One of the answers was that people with KA & similar higher powered mixers were beating the batter too long after each egg was added and incorporating too much air in the batter. The other thing is that eggs vary in size and many sizes today are larger than before. Larger eggs or the use of Jumbo eggs could make the batter run over the side of the pan during baking. The food editor said to measure the amount of eggs and not just the number called for because most recipes calculate 5 large eggs equaling a cup, while 5 jumbo eggs could be a lot more than a cup.

I have the K4C and the K45, both from the 70s and made by Hobart and each makes a different cake batter. The 45 turns out a stiffer batter than the K4C. In the 80s, I had oven capacity and enough Bundt pans to have 8 cakes in the ovens at the same time. I used the two KA mixers for batch after batch of batter until all 8 cakes were in the ovens. I only had to stop to run the bowls, paddles, splash guards and stuff through a fast Light, China cycle in the KDS18 when I changed from a more standard cake to chocolate or brown sugar pound cakes. I had Tupperware containers with the measured sugar and flour stacked up and waiting. I had all of the pans greased and floured before I started to prepare the first two cakes.

The great thing about a KitchenAid vs a Mixmaster or a Hamilton Beach mixer like in our house is that when you start creaming the butter, you don't have to turn the bowl to push the stuff into the beaters, The KA just knocks the hell out of it and keeps the paddle turning.

I have also had great success in preparing pound cake batter in my larger Cuisinart.

 

[foraloysius]

Tom,

I'm very well aware of the differences. Overhere you start a poundcake too by creaming the butter with the sugar. But I learned to do it the other way around from my grandmother. You get indeed more air into the batter with this method but using a bigger cake pan will deal with that. The result is a bit lighter, airier pound cake, which I like.

For a basic pound cake I use this recipes (quantities in metric I'm afraid)

4 eggs
250 gram sugar
pinch of salt
250 gram butter
250 gram selfraising flower (I don't even know if you have that)
some lemon zest
the juice of half a lemon.

Beat the eggs with the sugar and the salt, mix in the melted butter, add the siffed selfraising flower (or all purpose flower with some baking soda and baking powder) and after that the lemon juice and the lemon zest. Beat a few more minutes on the highest speed.

Put the batter in a cake pan and bake for an hour on 350F