Once upon a time, I thought that using electrically powered appliances for baking was for wimps. If our ancestors for ages untold had managed to churn out meal after meal with wooden spoons, whisks, and will power, I could do so as well. I was a teenager, my mom did most of the cooking and my sister did most of the baking, and my favorite thing to make was a batch of brownies with melted butter. A wooden spoon or spatula worked just fine, and I didn't have to worry about dangling the cord into anything sticky. Furthermore, a lot of doughs, either for bread or cookies, were stiff enough that most hand-held mixers (the only kind of mixer I knew of ) couldn't handle them anyway.
