My Favorite Things

I’ve just finished up my Christmas baking.  Five different cookie recipes, plus various chocolate treats including dark and milk chocolate truffles.  I even tried my hand at making dark chocolate raspberry bonbons and they were a huge success!  Seven boxes of treats were sent to friends and family.  Another ten gift bags or tins of treats were given out to my local peeps.  I am not a professional baker - I only feel like one at this time of year.  My mixers worked hard this year and so did I!  Now that I am coming off of my baking high, I want to share with you two things that I can absolutely NOT live without at this time or year, or at any time of year.

The first item I cannot live without is my KitchenAid stand mixer.  Admittedly, I have two now: a classic stand mixer and a Bowl-Lift stand mixer, and I am hard-pressed to choose a favorite.  I am a little partial to the classic mixer, because (1) it was my Dad’s and (2) it was my first stand mixer and it has been good to me all these years.  The only downside is that I can’t 3X a batch of cookies in it.  On a side note, I bought a Bosch mixer about 4 years ago because it had such a large capacity, and I really only break that out during my holiday baking.

When my holiday baking is done and I am doing just my “normal” baking, my KitchenAid gets the job done.  I also love the attachments and the ease of using them.  I have been making fresh pasta and using the pasta roller and fettuccine cutter attachments somewhat regularly.  I have also used the Pasta Press (with varying degrees of success, but I am still learning).  Making fresh pasta is almost effortless using these attachments. I am dying to get the sifter and scale attachment, but I can’t afford it just yet.  You can find the classic stand mixer (5 Qt) here https://amzn.to/3vfyFCt and the larger Bowl-Lift mixer (7 Qt) here https://amzn.to/3GZfcIG 

The second item I cannot live without is parchment paper.  Whether it be parchment pre-sized to my baking sheet pans or the round cake pan parchment paper, it is not only a time saver, but it also cuts my cleaning time by 75%.  I used to buy it in a roll and then had to spend the time cutting it or folding it to fit the pans. To be honest, I just don’t want to be bothered with that.  I finally found a heavy duty parchment that is perfectly sized for my regular-sized home cookie sheets and you can find it here on Amazon https://amzn.to/3viDjj6 I promise, you won’t ever go back to the rolled parchment again.

There are so many items in my kitchen that I love and use regularly, but these two items are game-changers for me.  I think they will be for you, too.

Happy Baking!