Small Appliances for Cake Baking

If you’re an avid cook or baker, dealing with a hand-held mixer for mixing cake batters, though doable, will get tiresome. A stand mixer offers the luxury of hands-free mixing, which means multitasking—such as making additions to a batter or frosting as it’s mixing (essential when making a buttercream)—is far simpler. And with a motor more powerful than any you will find in a hand-held mixer, a stand mixer can handle bigger jobs. We rely on a stand mixer for the reverse creaming method employed for the yellow layer cake in this class.

The hand mixer’s light weight and ease of use make it an essential tool for anyone who wants to bake, even if only occasionally. It’s great for whipping cream or egg whites, creaming butter and sugar, or mixing a cake batter. We prefer simple, slim wire beaters to traditional beaters with flat metal strips around a center post since this post tends to be a good spot for batter to collect. While we usually use a stand mixer for our baking projects, you can use a mixer like this to beat the egg whites for the yellow layer cake in this class, or for the meringue that forms the base of the chocolate frosting for the cupcakes.

We generally rely on mixers when making cakes but a food processor does sometimes come in handy, especially when making a simple frosting. Less expensive food processors (less than $150 or so) just aren’t worth the money, and can’t perform the most basic tasks very well. The best pricier models have motors with more weight, run quieter, and don’t slow down under a heavy load of bread dough. We prefer models with a workbowl capacity of at least 11 cups. The food processor comes in handy for certain frostings— since the blade incorporates less air than a stand mixer it produces a creamy, fudgy texture.