Friday's Favorite - The Kitchenaid Mixer

This is a new weekly series of posts highlighting my favorite things - including, but not limited to, kitchen gadgets, food items, destinations and blogs.

The very first of these favorite things: My kichenaid mixer! How could I survive without it? It effortlessly mixes cake and cookie doughs, whips up perfect buttercreams, kneads bread dough, and cranks out pastas (with the awesome pasta attachment). With other attachments, you can freeze ice cream and grind your own meats. My kitchen has a surplus of appliances, but if I could only keep one, this would be it. A few years ago, I upgraded from the standard 4.5 quart to the Professional 6.0 quart. I purchased an extra mixing bowl and plastic lids from kitchenaid.com. When I have a cookie dough which needs to be chilled, I place the plastic lid right on the mixing bowl and place it in the refrigerator - quite handy!