KitchenAid - two things in one day!

If you are a regular or occasional reader of my blog you know how unhappy I am with my KitchenAid Stove and just KitchenAid in general. Well today I get to add TWO items to my "Why I hate KitchenAid" list.

In case you had not noticed Christmas is less then two weeks away! OMG! How did that happen?!?!

Well, I woke up to that reality today, probably because yesterday my niece asked about the BEST cookies, and was I making them? Well the "best" cookies are Christmas tree (sour cream) press cookies covered in an confectionery sugar icing and sprinkles. Last year she ate dozens of the things. I accused my husband and my brother in law of eating them all, and no one noticed that it seemed that Ellie, ALWAYS had a cookie in her hand or pocket. The dog noticed way before us, and took to following her around, and she probably gave him a couple dozen! Anyway with that kind of cookie consumption I better get going!

So I started this morning. First I made a double batch of my mom's "Hungarian Christmas cookie" dough. It is simple: flour, butter, and sour cream. But this simple dough puffs so well! So that got put in the fridge to chill.

Then I made some Springelle dough, and rolled it out, cut them and set them on the wood cutting board to dry until tonight.

Finally, I made a double batch of the sour cream press cookies. The reason I have a 6 quart "Professional" KitchenAid mixer is because of Christmas. I usually make cookies pretty non-stop for 2 weeks. I used to give them as gifts, until I decided they were not appreciated, but still there are a dozen or more types on my list every year, and I make at least a double recipe of each one.

So anyway during the process of making the dough my mixer died. It stopped mixing and starting clicking. I immediately turned it off, pulled the dough off, and it went around OK. I put it back in the dough, it went around one time and stopped!

I yelled a curse word! (or three.) Farmer Hubby came in and asked what was wrong. I told him the damned thing stopped working again! (Two years ago I broke it at Christmas making Marshmallows.) My dear husband is a very handy guy and the first thing he did was break out the screwdriver and pull the case off. About 5 minutes of Internet research reveled that a plastic piece inside the thing was replaced with a metal piece. Huh? Our problem?

Turns out it was. The plastic piece flexes which causes damage to the gears. So I now have 2 gears, a bearing, and (new and improved) metal housing on it's way to us. The damage $83. Last time we had to fix the thing KitchenAid wanted us to send it to them in a special ($89) box so they could tell us what was wrong with it. That time hubby was able to just replace a fuse (3 for $2 at Radio Shack) and the thing was fixed.

This will slow down cookie production, but thankfully I have a second mixer, a 4 quart model (350 watts instead of 525) that was a gift from hubby last year, as a response to my complaints that my 6 quart mixer has a problem mixing anything less then a double recipe, of almost anything. Now I wish he had got me a SunBeam instead of the KitchenAid.

I finished mixing the dough by hand and was ready to start baking. Should be quick, press cookies, one sheet can hold 3-1/2 dozen and bakes in 10-12 minutes. Well, 10-12 minutes if your stove is being good that day and holding temp, which mine is not! So annoying! It comes up to temp at 375 and by the end of the 12 minutes it is down in the mid-low 300s (went as low as 225!) So I started reheating the oven in between every cookie batch, turning the oven off and preheating back up to 375. Added 5 minutes plus to every batch.

Sigh. I hope it behaves better, but I need to figure out some holiday meals I can do without worrying to much about the stove, to spare a repeat of Thanksgiving.

Well, back to work with me! Lots to do in the 4 days before company comes...