Mon Bijoux

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.

Eventually, though, I went away to college and had to cook for myself.  This was also the time I ventured away from brownies and the occasional batch of cookies into things like cakes and breads, at which point having some help with the mechanical task of mixing everything into one cohesive mass became more and more appealing.  During one holiday season when I was home with my family, I promised a little brother I would make a white cake for him, since he was going through an anti-chocolate phase.  I found a recipe for a nice white cake, got out the ingredients and started dumping things into bowls, and then asked my mom where the hand mixer was.  She informed me it was broken, and that if I wanted those egg whites at any kind of peak, I was going to have to do the whipping.

I whipped the egg whites.  I kept my promise to my little brother.  My wrists ached for the next thirty hours and I conceded the benefits of having a mixer.  I stuck with the hand-held variety, though, and I still made all my bread doughs by hand.

When I went to France, I decided to splurge and get a food processor, almost purely so I could make scones and not have to cut the butter into the flour by hand.  As someone who has made her own puff pastry by hand (another promise to a family member at holiday season--I am nothing if not dedicated to the holiday baking and the belief that any homemade butter pastry is better than a store-bought one), I testify that it can be done, but it takes a very long time.  I had the best luck with alternating periods of cutting the butter and chilling the mixture, repeated about ten times over the course of three hours.  That's a lot of time attached to the kitchen.  But with a food processor, it was quick!  It was easy!  The pastry was made!  You just had more dishes to do!

It still took less time and kept everything colder than I could doing it by hand.  I loved it.

By this time, recipes for things like macarons and swiss meringue and marshmallows had joined my baking and pastry queue, and I was well aware that those things are mush easier to make with a stand mixer involved.  But they were expensive, and I knew I would be moving across another ocean or two before coming to rest in an apartment long enough for it to be worth it.  I waited.

But now!  I am settled into my apartment, an apartment with an actual kitchen space and counters and everything, and I wanted an electrically power kitchen gizmo.  I just couldn't decide what to get.  A decent food processor can chop, grind, cut butter into flour, and to some extent mix, but not whip anything or handle bread dough.  (I am aware many food processors claim to be able to whip cream.  They lie.  I got another batch of sore wrists from that episode.)  A stand mixer excels at three functions and three functions only: whipping, mixing, and kneading.  They seemed so close in purpose--why didn't some super-combination do everything?

Those super combinations do exist, but only for the very expensive models or via high-priced attachments, and so I waited. 

Then one Saturday, I was out shopping and perusing the various kitchen gizmos, debating if a super-cheap food processor was worth it.  I had a batch of puff pastry waiting to be made at home, you see.  Then, behind the smaller, lesser boxes, I saw a large box with a stand mixer and several attachments.  One of those was a food processor.

Cue the heavenly lights and choirs of angels singing Hallelujah.  I have never seen those bundled together, and here it was!  On sale!  I took my new darling home, and my husband dubbed it my jewel and started in with Gollum references.  But look what I can make!

Fork included for scale.  It's a big loaf of bread.  Recipe here.

Now if only I can get my oven to cooperate and stop burning things, I am going to have so much fun.