The best stand mixers to make baking easier – and even more fun | Baking | The Guardian

Whether for kneading dough or whipping up a heavy cake mix, these kitchen workhorses chosen by our expert will have you multitasking and saving muscle power with ease

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Restaurant owner and caterer Margot Henderson once described being on a big job, and the power – or maybe the mixer – failing, I can’t remember which. What I’ve never forgotten is that meringues were on the menu, so her team resorted to whipping them up with forks.

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That is a story about how you can bake almost anything you set your mind to without a stand mixer. But like any good power tool, having one definitely makes life easier.

For a really good sponge, you want to cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, which takes about seven minutes with a hand mixer, for a basic four-egg, two-tiered cake. Doing that in the stand mixer means you can multitask – and save on muscle power. And once you’ve mastered your machine, it’s much easier to get consistent results in your baking.

Now, if you’re a Bake Off fan, you likely dream of owning a pastel-coloured KitchenAid – although the eagle-eyed among us will have noticed Kenwood mixers in the tent, too. The truth is there are plenty of options out there – and none are cheap. I’ve tested several rigorously, and here are the best stand mixers.

Best stand mixer overall KitchenAid Artisan tilt-head mixer 4.7l £449 at Amazon

Best value stand mixer Lakeland digital stand mixer 6.5l £249.99 at Lakeland

Best compact stand mixer Kenwood Go stand mixer £249.99 at John Lewis

I’ve researched, written and recipe tested – and eaten – for the Guardian’s food desks for over a decade. I’m also a compulsive home cook and baker. I regularly do massive picnics to which I’ll start by inviting a few friends and end up catering for what feels like everyone I’ve ever met. For them, I’ll make multiple savouries (French cake aux olives, cheese twists, Ottolenghi’s cauliflower cake), sweets (my grandma’s banana breads, Nigella’s ginger cake) and multi-layer painted cakes as rotund as watermelons, decorated with everything from chocolate trees to edible ponds.

Until now, I’ve done this all with a hand mixer – or rather, a series of hand mixers, which start behaving like Victorian steam engines and then die a death. I am, thus, heavily invested in finding a suitable, long-term alternative.

I longlisted the 25 best and most popular stand mixers out there, trawling through the major home appliance shops and comparing popularity rankings with industry recommendations and user reviews.

I narrowed that down to a shortlist of five to test. Rating some of the latest machines by well-known manufacturers, I then added a sixth: the Kenwood Go Stand Mixer, which was released mid-test, on 2 October.

To test each appliance, I made a Victoria sponge (to test mixing), a Swiss meringue buttercream (two kinds of whisking), and a shokupan (a Japanese milk bread that requires vigorous kneading).

Where brands do not want their machines back, I’m donating them to my favourite local grassroots organisation Badu, which holds holiday clubs for kids and mentoring for teens, community fitness classes and Christmas hampers for single mums and struggling families. The mixers will be used at the Badu community cafe, events or donated to families in the Badu network. It is a consistently excellent endeavour, deeply beloved of my local community in Hackney.

As soon as I start working with this machine, I realise what really matters with a mixer. I’m the baker: this is a power tool. It needs to be perfectly stable, intuitive to use and have a reliable, heavy-duty motor.

Why we love itThe Artisan range is a step up from KitchenAid’s long-term Classic range, but just as bare boned. It boasts a heavy zinc metal body with a solid enamel coating, weighty stainless steel parts (the beater’s 347g, the whisk 210g and the dough hook 416g; all are dishwasher safe), and it comes with almost no instructions. You really don’t need any.

As with the Classic’s “tilt-head”, the motor is in the top here, hanging over the bowl. You connect the mixing attachments to it simply by pushing and turning. Lift up the head and you can control the speed of the mixer via two levers on either side, as old school and obvious as the vent and window mechanisms in a Land Rover.

When mixing, the attachments reach most of the bowl’s surface, requiring minimal hand-scraping. Changing them and lifting the head is straightforward. Nothing feels flimsy.

It’s a shame that … the brand insists on so many design options, which come with a absurd price tag. I try a new model from the Evergreen Design Series (£899), which is a matte khaki or forest green, depending on the light, and comes with a walnut wooden bowl. The blurb says the wood has been treated with a food-safe finish, and while it does look pretty, it’s ridiculously heavy. At 1.1kg, it weighs more than any bowl you’re moving around should. And all I can think about is what happens to timber countertops around the sink area: they get rank.

So stick to the default stainless-steel bowl, with a handle for ease of use – or the optional extra glass one (both are dishwasher-safe) – and you’re golden.

Volume: 4.7 litresCapacity: 2kg bread dough/2.7kg cake batter/10 egg whitesPower: 300WWeight: 11.6kgGuarantee: five years and 15-year repair promise

£499 at KitchenAid£449 at Amazon

I was an immediate fan of this machine: it looks and feels like a stand mixer should, and comes in pretty, shiny colours. Importantly, cost-wise, it’s much more affordable than a traditional KitchenAid. That makes it perfect for anyone who dreams of a classic tilt-head mixer but isn’t willing to spend quite as much money.

Why we love it This is a sturdy machine, with a body and parts that feel solid and dependable. They are, in fact, about 50% lighter (beater 121g, whisk 86g and dough hook 102g – all of which can go in the dishwasher) than on the KitchenAid. This is a good thing if you need to move the machine around in a kitchen where you’re juggling for counter space. Using it is easy – the parts connect straightforwardly, and the simple rotary LED dial control feels intuitive.

The lightness does become apparent, however, when whisking on high speed or kneading heavy doughs: the machine is noisy and I find myself holding on to it to keep it steady. That said, it comes with heavy-duty suction pads that, once you do try to move it, prove themselves dependable. It has a generous 6.5l bowl (handwash only) and a powerful 1,800-watt motor with 10 speed settings, so you can really go for it.It’s a shame that … when mixing, I found I needed to scrape down the sides of the bowl a lot. The splash guard has grip pads around the central rim to keep it in place, hugging the attachment casing, but it’s not terribly secure and I ended up hardly using it. It’s not dishwasher safe, either.

All the controls are digital via a single LED rotary control panel, which shuts off every time you stop the machine and lift the head for longer than 30 seconds. So, if you’ve started using the timer, you lose the count whenever you have to lift the head to scrape down the bowl. It’s annoying.

More importantly, I worry about long-term wear and tear. The mixing attachments are coated in Teflon, which gets scratched and starts to peel over time, as on other things like frying pans or rice cooker bowls, and there’s little you can do to fix that when it happens. Also, controlling usage with a digital circuit means that if the circuitry breaks, as digital appliances usually do at some point, you’re stuck.

Volume: 6.5 litres Capacity: 1.5kg bread dough/minimum three egg whitesPower: 1,800WWeight: 6.5kgGuarantee: three years

£249.99 at Lakeland£249.99 at Amazon

A newcomer to the compact end of the mixer spectrum, the Go is perfect for small kitchens where counter space and storage are at a premium. The sales blurb says you can make up to 48 cupcakes, pizza for four, or a two-tier celebration cake.

Why we love itMy kitchen is so tiny and my work space so reduced, I couldn’t seriously contemplate or justify having a stand mixer – until I met this one. Where other compact options require lots of disassembly to put away, this diminutive, traditional tilt-head mixer can be stored as is. With the top down, the whole thing stands just 30cm tall and weighs a comparatively low 6.3kg. When not in use, you can simply pick it up by the frankly genius handle on top to put it away, although its two fetching colours – storm blue and clay red – mean it’s pretty enough to look at on an open shelf. It’s lightweight, but with coated aluminium parts, not plastic, ensuring better longevity. The front-facing control dial, positioned on the head, means the appliance doesn’t have to stand perpendicular to you: you can have it facing you straight on in a narrow space. Like other bigger machines, there are optional attachments, including spice blenders and smoothie makers, so you can make more use of the motor that now lives in your kitchen. The bowl, the whisk and the splash guard are dishwasher safe, but not the beater and dough hook.

It’s a shame that … despite its decent 800-watt motor, wattage doesn’t necessarily indicate power. It needed more time and bowl scraping than other machines. You don’t get the five-year guarantee that comes with a Kenwood kMix, either.

Volume: 4 litresCapacity: 1.8kg cake batter/1.5kg dough/8 egg whitesPower: 800WWeight: 6.3kgGuarantee: a year

£249.99 at Kenwood£249.99 at John Lewis

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Best for: any aspiring professional with decent space to work in and lots of cash

This is an exceptional machine, built to last for decades. In place of a tilt-head mechanism, which lowers the mixing attachment into the bowl, this one raises the bowl to a fixed head. Given that most stand mixers have the motor in the head, it feels safer and more durable not to be flipping it up and down on a hinge, which, over time, is more likely to weaken than a non-moving part. Specialists also point out that tilt-head mixers are more vulnerable in the long term simply because they wobble and vibrate more.

The fixed head also means you can store and use it when it’s pushed right against a wall if your countertop is shallow. You definitely need some room to use this, though: it is over 40cm tall and nearly 30cm wide.

The bowl is secured not by the base, as all the others on test are, but by three points on the sides, making it super stable. And with a body of die-cast zinc metal and parts of stainless steel, the whole thing weighs as much as a small child, so it doesn’t budge, even when you’re kneading big batches of bread dough or doing voluminous whisking at high speed. Those attachments do all the work for you, too: the bowl requires minimal scraping down.

You can hook up other devices, such as meat grinders and pasta makers, by attaching them to a connector on the front. This makes sense: it’s a powerful motor and should last for a long time, with a long repair guarantee.

It didn’t make the final cut because … of that prohibitive price tag.

Volume: 5.6 litres; capacity: 3.7kg bread dough/eight egg whites; power: 375W; weight: 13kg; guarantee: five years (against manufacturing defects, during which period, KitchenAid covers all costs for service labour, spare parts and return postage costs, within applicable territories) and a 15-year repairability promise (here, you pay for postage and repair costs, but the guarantee is that the machine is repairable and KitchenAid provides the person to do the work).

£749 at KitchenAid£559 at John Lewis

Best for: serious home bakers who bake in big quantities and like high-tech appliances

The Titanium Chef is intuitive to operate. It runs smooth and quieter than most, with a very powerful 1,200-watt motor and hefty all-metal parts in aluminium (the beater and the dough hook) and stainless steel (the bowl and whisk). It feels solid and reliable – as confirmed by the considerable maximum recommended quantities. The bowl, tools and splash guard are dishwasher safe.

It didn’t make the final cut because … it has too many unnecessary extras. One of the Titanium Chef range’s big selling points is that the mixers come with a built-in digital scale, which doubles as a timer. They also come with what the brand calls “PopTops” (different-coloured top covers, allowing you to, as the blurb says “complement your kitchen style, accessories, or even simply your recipe” – essentially, it’s for Instagram cooking). I already have a scale and a timer, and I can’t be dealing with tops that serve no other purpose than cosmetic.

Volume: 5 litres; capacity: 2.18kg bread dough/2kg cake batter/12 egg whites; power: 1,200W; weight: 9.5kg; guarantee: five years, 10-year motor guarantee

£399 at Kenwood£469 at Appliances Direct

Best for: occasional home bakers short on space

This is a design outlier, conceived a bit like a Nutribullet. The attachments connect not to an overhanging head but to a rotating shaft, which locks on to the motor in the base through the centre of the bowl. It can handle big mixes – up to 1.4kg for a heavy cake mix, 0.75kg of dry ingredients for bread kneading, and 12 egg whites for whisking. Heavy-duty suction pads beneath the base keep it stable even when the machine is kneading hard.

Everything apart from the stainless steel bowl is made of moulded plastic. As a result, it weighs in at a total of only 4.7kg. You can easily hold the base with one hand and the bowl with the other. The timer doesn’t automatically reset if you stop mixing or change attachments, which is great if you’re relying on the timer but need to stop mixing to swap attachments or add ingredients. And the display and control dial (for the timer and the mixing speed) are separate, which feels more robust.

The biggest pluses here are how cheap and storable this mixer is. We dubbed it the kitchen Festool, sharing its grey and green colour scheme with the cult German power-tool brand, and packing down into the same kind of satisfyingly transportable bundle. The bowl and accessories are dishwasher safe, too.

It didn’t make the final cut because … of that detailed storage system. For a start, there are more moving parts than in other appliances (two whisks, two beaters, a two-headed kneading attachment, a two-headed bowl scraper and the central removable shaft pieces). Taking it all apart to wash and pack up is a faff. Absurdly, the extremely diagram-heavy instruction manual doesn’t contain a diagram to show how everything slots into the bowl: it’s like playing Tetris.

Further, it’s noisy when in use, and the plastic bed with the slots isn’t nearly as robust as the mixer parts themselves. I fear it wouldn’t be long before useful bits that keep things neat break off, as moulded plastic so often does, and then become extremely irritating.

Volume: 4 litres; capacity: 0.75kg dry bread ingredients/1.4kg dry cake ingredients/12 egg whites; power: 650W; weight: 4.7kg; guarantee: two years, extendable to three when you register

£119 at Morphy Richards£119 at Amazon

Brands are constantly courting new custom with in-season colour schemes, fancy add-ons and ever heftier price tags. Remember, though, that even the cheapest stand mixer is an investment: you need to pick what will work best in your kitchen, in terms of cost, usage and storage.

Do you bake regularly or occasionally? How many people do you usually cater for at any given time? Can you give counter real estate to a whopping great machine or do you need to be able to pack it away? If you do, how much storage can you afford to relinquish?

All instruction manuals will tell you to not connect your mixer to an extension lead or an adaptor, so think carefully about where you can plug it in. Also, be aware of how much space it takes to operate – if it’s a tilt-head mixer, you’ll need space above and behind it, so a deeper countertop.

Most mixers come in a few sizes. TheKenwood Titanium Chef Baker and the Titanium Chef Baker XL are actually very similar, but the XL can whisk up to 16 egg whites and two litres of cream and mix up to 4.5kg of butter and sugar. Similarly, the KitchenAid Artisan bowl-lift comes in a 6.6l version and a 6.9l Pro version, too. The latter has a more stable and robust direct current motor, and is certified by the National Sanitation Foundation as good to use in commercial settings. Choose the volume most suited to what you’ll need to bake most often.

All the machines come with warnings to not overload the motor. I’m always tempted to see how far an appliance can go, but that comes with the danger that improper use will void the guarantee. Stick to the maximum amounts of dry, wet or combined ingredients specified. It’s not consistent across all manuals, which is annoying, but it’s worth working it out for the recipes you normally use.

Talking of recipes, while it feels strange to include recipes for mayonnaise next to technical tool adjustment specs, in the kind of instruction manual you’d get with a vacuum cleaner, it’s helpful to see how a brand adapts recipes to its machine. A kneading hook, for example, obviously works differently to how bread is kneaded by hand. And paddles mix cake batter differently than, say, a food processor or a hand mixer. Take the time to learn how best to use your mixer.

Also pay attention to the cleaning instructions. You’ll need to wash all removable (non-motor) parts and wipe down the whole machine before you use it for the first time. Every instruction manual reassures you that a slight burning smell from the motor, on first use, is normal. And many mixers have parts that can go in the dishwasher, but often the bowl is not one of them.

While there seems to be no upper price limit for pro machines (the Sub Zero Wolf stand mixer retails for £1,790!), you can find mixers for less than £100, with ostensibly powerful motors.

But wattage is not everything. I found that KitchenAid’s relatively lower wattage doesn’t hamper its machines’ ability to power through hefty doughs with the same reliability as Kenwood’s higher-wattage machines, if in smaller quantities – or a bit slower. Many tests focus on how fast you get a mix done, but I’m not convinced that’s the main concern. My bigger question is how long that motor will last.

Of course, this is something you can only really test over decades. But motorheads highlight that the KitchenAid’s metal gears and manual parts mean they can be easily repaired and, so long as you look after them, will last for decades. Kenwood mixers also have gears and a reputation for lasting for ever. However, repair specialists note that this reputation was built on older-generation machines. Newer versions, while excellent, contain associated circuits that can be harder to repair and can cause the machines to fail if they break. The Lakeland mixer here also has full metal gears – but those digital controls present a weaker link in the long run.

This suggests that if durability is your priority, forking out what you can afford on a higher-end – albeit simple – machine is the best way to invest this amount of money.

Dale Berning Sawa is a freelance journalist focusing on arts and culture and food. She has written, researched, recipe tested and eaten for the Guardian’s various food desks for more than a decade, has interviewed the world’s best chefs and artists alike – because, in spirit, they are one and the same – and loves nothing more than to feed her own people. She runs Untitled, 1974 on Substack