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The flex edge beaters help set the KitchenAid 6 Speed Hand Mixer apart from rivals. Their rubberised surface makes it easier to incorporate ingredients into a mixture and keeps down levels of noise and vibration. Combined with clever accessory storage and iconic KitchenAid design elements, this mixer’s high price is nearly justified. However, the brand’s other similarly priced mixers, such as the 9 Speed Hand Mixer, come with more accessories (albeit with regular metal beaters). Food Processing Machine
This is the latest addition to KitchenAid’s line of hand mixers, which ranges from five to nine speeds and also includes a cordless option.
But what sets this 6 Speed Hand Mixer apart from others is the fact that it comes with flex edge beaters – where the bottom third of the beaters is covered in a rubbery material, which aids mixing while reducing noise and vibration from contact with a bowl.
There isn’t much to dislike about this hand mixer, but, like other KitchenAid products, it’s expensive. It also lacks the dough hooks that much cheaper rivals come with.
The 6 Speed Hand Mixer features the widely loved KitchenAid design, with a red or black shiny plastic body and the metallic band familiar from the brand’s iconic stand mixers.
The real innovation here are the flex edge beaters. First introduced a decade ago for KitchenAid’s stand mixers, the main aim of flex edge – flexible rubbery edges – on the beaters is efficiency, so you don’t need to stop mixing to scrape the bowl with a spatula for any unmixed ingredients. Another benefit is avoiding the clatter and vibration that usually results from metal coming into contact with the bottom of a bowl.
Handily, the flex edge beaters are also dishwashable, as is the 16-wire whisk. Both can be stored on the appliance itself by using the storage clip – a plastic disc with slots for the tools that attach to the mixer’s accessory holes.
Unfortunately, no dough hooks are provided here, and the manual warns that the flex edges beaters “are not designed for mixing and kneading bread dough”. While making bread may not be the first thing that comes to mind when using a hand mixer, it’s definitely doable, and I have had great results with some hand mixers.
As with most hand mixers, each beater can only be fitted into a specific matching hole on the body of the mixer, whereas the whisk goes into either of the holes. A button at the top of the mixer handle releases the accessories. Below it, you’ll find the speed control slider.
As its name says, this mixer has six different speeds, which genuinely vary from a slow stirring motion to very fast beating. More budget-friendly hand mixers tend to stay in the fast to very fast end, even when they seemingly offer different speeds.
Here, speed 1 is meant for stirring and initial mixing, while speed 2 is suitable for heavier mixes, such as cookie dough. Both settings 2 and 3 are recommended for cream cheese mixtures and mashing, whereas 4 and 5 are best for cake batters and blending butter and sugar. Finally, speed 6 is intended for whipping egg whites and cream.
Setting and changing the speed needs a bit of getting used to, as it’s easy to overshoot the marks initially. The best guide is to push the slider so the top of it sits flush with the relevant speed marker line.
I started my tests with a tricky mix – cookie dough. The butter I had was still on the cold side, so I had to take it slow and steady, combining it with sugar at speeds 1-2 to avoid excessive splatter. I reached an even, thick mixture after about 6 minutes.
Keeping to the same speeds, I added eggs, peanut butter and flour, mixing for a minute or two after each new addition, and finally chocolate chips, which took just 30 seconds to be evenly distributed despite the thickness of the dough.
While some elbow grease was still needed to move the mixer around, the appliance itself was pretty light and made working with a large quantity of such a heavy mixture much easier.
Using the flex edge beaters during this process was handy in terms of not having to manually scrape the bowl for unmixed ingredients. Although, more importantly for me, there was less of that horrible clatter of metal against the bowl and the usual vibration travelling up my arm.
Next, I fitted the mixer with the whisk and turned the speed all the way up to 6 for whisking four room-temperature egg whites. These were foamy after 1min and stiff after another 2mins 30secs.
For whipping 250ml of double cream with a bit of icing sugar, I started slow, with settings 1-2, increasing the speed to 4-5 as the mixture thickened. Overall, it took 2mins 20secs to achieve nice peaks.
If you hate the noise hand mixers make, then this one is slightly quieter thanks to the rubberised flex edge beaters.
If you want to make yeast-based doughs, you should watch out for a mixer that comes with dough hooks.
With the 6 Speed Hand Mixer, KitchenAid has introduced handy flex edge beaters that will make mixing both easier and less noisy. However, these beaters are pretty much the only selling point here, as the ever-so-slightly pricier KitchenAid 9 Speed Hand Mixer comes with a greater range of speeds as well as dough hooks.
For those after something more affordable, the Russell Hobbs Desire Hand Mixer is very efficient, while the Kenwood Chefette Mary Berry Special Edition Hand Mixer also doubles as a light stand mixer.
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Used as our main mixer for the review period
We mix meringues to check for fluffy consistency, make cake mixture and knead dough.
It comes with the flex edge beaters and a whisk.
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Founded in 2004, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
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