This Is Dedicated to My New KitchenAid® 5-Speed Ultra Power® Hand Mixer

Thank you, KitchenAid® 5-Speed Ultra Power® Hand Mixer, for coming into my life precisely when I needed you most. You see, for years I have now done everything with raw, manual labor, be it mixing cake batter, kneading encanelado dough, making cakeballs, or stirring up trouble by making chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies that counteract the effectiveness of our lovely gym. And frankly, dear KitchenAid® 5-Speed Ultra Power® Hand Mixer, I was getting sick of it. My arms would get tired, my hands would go numb, and at the end of the process I’d have some smooth-ass batter or dough (when lumpiness wasn’t called for, that is), but it took so damn long that it added an extra hour to my baking time in extreme cases (like encanelados).

There is, of course, a lot to be said about manually mixing things. My cheesecakes are always so much more incredibly delicious (and less likely to crack) if I stay away from hand mixers. However, given that I don’t have a springform pan and I haven’t baked a cheesecake in ages, manually mixing was overrated for the things that I was doing, especially cakes. I was also always taught that you never use machines to mix encanelado dough—it’d be damn near impossible thanks to the thickness and you’d burn out your motor. Oh, how my mother, sister and I have labored over encanelado dough. Sure, sometimes it’s fun, like when you’re really mad and you’re pretending that the dough is someone you’re giving a severe beating.  For the most part, though, it just leaves you in pain even as the delicious cinnamon smell permeates your apartment. Ouch.

But then, you! You came and you saved me! Just wanted to get a little baking done! Gracias!

Thanks to your handy, dandy, included attachment, the Stainless Steel Dough Hook (praise be to the baking gods!), I was able to knead my encanelado dough in a quarter of the time, mixing the ingredients perfectly until the dough was smooth instead of slightly grainy, and was done baking in the blink of an eye. I produced 87 encanelados in about an hour and a half. That’s not bad!

Now, I know my love affair with you will end when IP and I move here:

And we move into something like this:

And we have a kitchen about this size (or maybe bigger?):

I will then buy this:

Until then, though, you are my one true small appliance love. I look forward to baking with you for the next few years, but hopefully not beyond four or five. Mwah!