I get that question pretty often. The short answer is… well, there is no short answer. Mostly, the question that’s really being asked is: Tilt-Head or Bowl-Lift? The tilt-head KitchenAid mixers are excellent all-around machines. For most folks buying their first KitchenAid mixer to do general baking and food prep (with attachments), this would be… more →“Which Mixer Should I Get?”
You may have seen this mixer on TV, or in a video on the Internet.
This is Flossie (she’s pink like candy floss), but nobody calls her that more than once. To all the folks at the diner she’s “Flo”. Flossie is an example of an extremely rare specimen: the Accolade 400. This is a tilt-head that KitchenAid made for a little while in the early 2000s, and then discontinued…. more →The Unusual Ones Get Names
The story begins the usual way: eBay listing of a mixer being sold “for parts or not working”, cheap. Had a bit of conversation with the seller, “it’s running a little rough”. No problem. I provide my usual packing advice (because the seller had never done this before), Buy It Now, shipped, done. Then the… more →Pro Series Disaster Recovery
Every so often I encounter someone with a really old machine that needs repair, or even just long-overdue maintenance. The owner is very reluctant to let the machine out of their sight, because it was a treasured gift, or handed down from a loved relative. I totally get it — you never know what can… more →Family Heirloom
It’s easy enough to buy a cobalt-blue KitchenAid mixer these days, but the color is really hard to find in older models. The KSM90 “Ultra Power” tilt-head was the first of the cobalt-blue machines; it was made as an “exclusive” for Williams-Sonoma. They’re findable on eBay, but frequently command a premium, even when sold “for… more →“I’ve always wanted a blue mixer…”
This machine (1997 K45SS) was in excellent overall condition, requiring only routine maintenance. Unfortunately, the head lock lever was bent in transit (the mixer tipped over and landed on it), but that was easily resolved with a replacement latch mechanism while the lower gear case cover was off. The owner had retrofitted the mixer with… more →The Cake Machine
There seems to be a trope going around that modern KitchenAid mixers are specifically inferior to vintage ones because their “gears are made of plastic” (or a similarly phrased complaint). This is categorically not true. All of the gears in full-sized tilt-head KitchenAid mixers, from a 60s-era K45, the 90s KSM90 “Ultra Power” or the… more →Plastic Mythology
So, in “Hard Luck Cases“, I mentioned learning a valuable lesson. When I got the mixer on the bench, I didn’t even plug it in to see if it ran. Once I saw its overall condition, with the corroded power cord, crud, and all the rest, I just started right in on disassembling it. As… more →It’s Never The Motor Brushes
“Rusty” was another Goodwill find, a Hobart-era K5SS (bowl-lift, solid state speed control, 5qt bowl). This classic needed almost as much work as I’ve ever put into a mixer. Most of the time spent was just on getting through the layers of crud so that I could disassemble it and perform the necessary service. (I… more →Hard Luck Cases