The Essential Mixer Cookbook: 150 Effortless Recipes For Your Stand Mixer and All of Its Attachments

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, comprehensive guide & recipes!
Review: Exactly the right book to go with your KitchenAid stand mixer, or any other mixer for that matter! Apparently written with support from KitchenAid, this book has a nice history of the stand mixer, descriptions for the use of each attachment, and a handy chart cross-referencing recipes with required attachments (and country of origin for the recipe).
Each recipe has icons for the attachment(s) needed, how much time is required for preparation, and complete, clear instructions for making the dish, including how to use the attachment(s), including proper speed number. Most recipes have nice photos of the finished dish, and many have photos showing preparation steps.
This book has been very well thought out. I'm looking forward to creating many of these dishes!

Rating:
Summary: Did the writers actually test these recipes?
Review: I really wanted to like this book. The photographs are gorgeous and all the recipes sound and look divine. But I have yet to try a recipe from the book that didn't need at least minor tweaking to work, and one of the recipes ended up causing a huge (and expensive) problem.

Some of the problems are minor: The basic pasta dough needs about two tablespoons of water to come together properly, and the spinach pasta will need more. Some aren't so minor: I have no idea what on earth the pretzel recipe is supposed to produce (paving bricks, maybe?), but the dry, stiff, crumbly dough was impossible to work with even after I added a lot of water and kneaded it vigorously with the dough hook and with my hands. I went over the ingredients several times to make sure I didn't miss something, so I'm inclined to wonder if the recipe as it's written in the book is missing an ingredient or a step.

And then there are the downright disastrous problems: The tagliatelle (pasta) recipe produces too much dough for a 5-quart Artisan KitchenAid to handle. The dough clogged the workbowl, jammed the dough hook, and burned out my KA's motor in just a few seconds.

Maybe there are some decent recipes in the book (I'm too afraid to try another one and risk my poor mixer again), but I'd advise fellow KitchenAid addicts to look elsewhere.