The pasta attachment works great, makes excellent fresh pasta. One piece of advice, buy the three attachment package (roller, spaghetti cutter and fettuccini cutter), not the two piece package (roller and fettuccini cutter only). The three piece package includes the spaghetti cutter, the two piece package does not, and it cannot be purchased separately. The only way to get it is to buy the three piece package. Weird. I have been unable to find any third party past attachments for the Kitchen Aid mixer.
I was pondering getting a KA for myself even though I do little to no cooking. But the cooking I DO do usually involves my mixer. I use mom’s hand-me-down Oster and it works pretty well.
Anyway, the day after I had this pondering, someone posted a Classic on one of my Facebook buy/sell groups for $75. I couldn’t pass it up. Now it’s mine!
Me and my bro are going to make oatmeal scotchies tomorrow. Considering we’ve been making these with the Oster for so many years, I have no fear that the Kitchen Aid won’t plow right through them!
My 15-year-old son, an aspiring baker, recently bought a Kitchen Aid. Not sure which model, but for a spare attachment, he got an ice cream maker, and he has made some pretty fantastic ice cream with it. If you’re at all interested in making home-made ice cream, that attachment is definitely one to consider.
I bought the ice cream maker, and have made ice cream a few times. It’s not entirely convenient, as it has to be frozen overnight and there is little room in the freezer. But the ice cream is good.
My wife’s opinion is exactly the opposite; she prefers the tilt-head so that she can put stuff in easier, and get the bowl out with less trouble. Of course, she’s pretty strong, so weight isn’t much of a concern.
She has an Artisan, and it gets pretty heavy use- cookies, dinner rolls, bread, pizza dough, etc… and has for at least 9 years, if not more (not sure how much she baked prior to our marriage). She’s had it considerably longer than that.
The other thing I’d recommend are the coated accessories; the aluminum ones oxidize and dark crud rubs off easily if you dishwash them, which is a whole lot easier than trying to hand-wash a paddle coated in sticky bread dough.
We have the meat grinder attachment- it works quite well for the most part. The sausage stuffing tubes that attach suck horribly though; it’s really hard to try and feed ground meat through the grinder a second time.