The Long Overdue CSN Product Review!

Some time ago I was contacted by CSN about doing another product review. I apologize to CSN and my blog friends that the review has been so long in coming. I received the product the day before I had to leave for Mom's.

I was given a $45 gift code to put towards an item of my choosing. No direction was given as to the nature and content of my review. All opinions are strictly my own, unless otherwise noted.

I chose this:



The Hamilton Beach Classic Stand Mixer

My first stand mixer!





Tech stuff first, so here are the specs:


•Doubles as a hand mixer
•290 Watts peak power makes mixing easy
•Shift & Stir™ bowl
•Versatile attachment set includes traditional beaters, whisk and dough hooks
•Brushed stainless steel
•4 qt. stainless steel bowl
•6 speeds & QuickBurst™button
•Bowl Rest™ mixer stabilizer

The machine has a 290 watt peak power rating, which is sufficient for everything that I used it for.

The stand section is lightweight, being mostly plastic. The mixer is a little heftier then my 15 yr old one, but not uncomfortably so. It is about the same as Mom's from the 1970s. As Mom's just started to act up (having problems with either not releasing the blades or failing to catch them securely), she will now get my old one, which she likes, as it is lighter than hers was. I'm just glad she has something safer now.

In stand mixer mode, the dimensions are about 16 inches tall, 9 inches wide and 13 inches back to front, a good size for my limited kitchen space. Since it's convertible, I'll be able to store the mixer in a drawer, and have already found a convenient place for the base. Sweet!

The turntable rotates very smoothly, and can be shifted approximately 3/4 of inch to the side, which allows the beaters to be closer to the center of the bowl rather than right by the sides, placing the beaters where they'll do the most good. This also allows using a bowl which has more rounded sides than the one supplied, without having the beaters hitting the side of the bowl. Very nice feature. The turntable is not mechanical, but turns due to the resistance of the beater blades with whatever is being beaten. More about this later.

I read in a customer review that attaching and detaching the mixer from the stand was difficult. Doing it smoothly takes a little practice, but isn't really difficult. The attachment is very secure, and I have no worries of the mixer falling off during use.

Tilting the mixer back is not a fluid process. The release button is on the back of the stand. While you are applying pressure in one direction to tilt the mixer back, you must also apply pressure to the button in the opposite direction, so you wind up working against yourself. It takes a little getting used to, and the catch is a little sticky on mine. The button must also be pushed to lower the mixer, so no worries of the mixer suddenly falling forward. Better safe than sorry, so I don't mind that it isn't a more intuitive setup.

The 6 speed push lever on the handle works smoothly, as does the eject button. The Burst button seems not to be a set speed, but perhaps a percentage increase of whatever speed the mixer is set on. In other words, bursting at speed six produces a faster speed than bursting at speed two.

As noted above, the attachment set includes traditional beaters, whisk and dough hooks, but does not include a paddle blade. It seems that this is the most often used attachment on the cooking shows, but I've never had a stand mixer before, so I doubt I'll miss it.

The Bowl Rest™ mixer stabilizer feature is a series of three grooves on the bottom of the mixer that allow you to stop the mixer and rest the back of the mixer on the lip of a bowl without it slipping, while the beaters are still in the bowl. The instructions warn not to use this on small or plastic bowls, without stating why. It's the chance of overbalancing the bowl (almost learned from experience), so I'll probably just stick to standing the mixer up on the flat heel.

The 3 language instruction booklet is rather scanty, however it is clearly written, with enough pictures to get the facts across.

Now for the fun part! I took the beater, without the stand, to Mom's for some advanced testing by a cook who knows her stuff. Well, she never showed up, so it was just Mom and I. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera so you can't see our efforts. Did I say that was unfortunate? Well, fortunate for me, unfortunate for lovers of slapstick. It's always great fun to cook with Mom.

We started with an experiment in Chili Rellanos. This is one of our favorites, but something she no longer does, as holding the mixer for the time required to get egg whites to stiff peaks is more than she's up to nowadays. She started them and I took over when she tired. We both thought the balance was a little off towards the front of the beater. The whisk attachment performed perfectly with the egg whites, as expected.

The Rellanos turned out very tasty, if a bit sloppy. I'll definitely be improving my technique on these; since they don't use the yolks, with the right cheese they can be relatively low in cholesterol.

Our other projects were a standard cake mix and whipped cream. These were less in the spirit of testing and more just wanting some good eats. Everything worked perfectly again.

Phase I Testing Results: Hand Mixer: 9 out of 10. I give high marks for functionality and ease of operation, with weight/balance being the only issue. It's something that I'll adjust to, but comfort while using the mixer is pretty important.

First up when I got home, another cake mix - but on the stand instead of hand-held. I always start with the eggs alone to incorporate a lot of air, this mix called for 3 eggs. The provided stainless steel bowl sits just far enough below the blades that the eggs whites were untouched. To be fair, the booklet did mention this might happen with small amounts, and that hand held would work better than on the stand.

What they didn't say was that it wouldn't be as funny. As I manually spun the bowl around, the yolks would approach the blades, then shoot between them and out the other side, unbroken. This was enough to amuse The Kitten for about 20 minutes or so, but eventually I got back to work.

Rather than switching to hand held, I transferred to a thick glass mixing bowl that sat higher, therefor closer to the blades. This bowl had rounded sides, bringing it into contact with the beater blades, but the ability to shift the turntable moved the bowl enough to avoid contact, and came in very handy.

The eggs beat up nicely, but did not offer enough resistance to automatically spin the bowl on the turntable, nor did it engage when I added the water. I incorporated the dry ingredients in four batches, and it wasn't until the third batch that the batter thickened enough to start the bowl rotating on it's own. No biggie, it all mixed perfectly in the end, so I'm quite satisfied. My batter was very light and airy, and the cupcakes turned out great.

My final test was bread dough using the hooks. My old countertop oven, the one that burnt out in the great electrical debacle of Christmas 2009, had a built in breadmaker. I replaced the oven, but as for the bread making function, I've been reluctant get a single-purpose machine because of the space issues. My kitchen has a total work counter area of 2'x4', and not all that much storage space for appliances.

The instructions say that a 1 pound loaf is the limit for the bread hooks, which is sufficient unto my needs. It also says that the hooks should only be used in hand-held mode (really, for 20 minutes of kneading?) At the risk of voiding my warranty, I choose to use them in stand mixer mode. I feel compelled to warn you DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! for legal reasons, but it worked perfectly well.

At the risk of offending the purists, although I enjoy hand kneading, I hate the sticky, messy early part of mixing the dough, so I'm very happy to have a machine to do that for me. I chose to use the mixer for the initial mixing and just a few minutes of kneading, and it worked very well for both. I did have to guide some of the flour towards the hooks during mixing, and the dough will climb the hooks during kneading, but it simply requires stopping the mixer and scraping it down with a spatula. This is easier to do with both hands free. I would have no problem letting the machine handle all the kneading, as long as it was carefully watched, which is a good rule no matter what you are doing.

I chose to do a flat style loaf, which has a heavier dough. I wanted to test the power of the machine on a thick, dry dough. The mixer easily handled the task, and my bread turned out great, with a nice crunchy crust and a firm, chewy crumb.

Phase II Testing Results: Stand Mixer: 9 out of 10. It may be that I'm inexperienced with stand mixers, but I really like this machine. It's the right size for me and for my kitchen. It's lightweight and easy to store. I had no problems using this machine, and found nothing to fault it on, other than the slight clumsiness of the tilt function and attaching to the base. Again, these are things I'll adjust to in time.

My testing might seem a little light, but after all, mixers aren't all that complicated. I think I covered all the important points. I would recommend this product as a good choice if the size and power fit your needs.

As usual it was a pleasure working with CSN, and I thank them for this opportunity and their patience.