Easter Baking with Vonshef

I’ve dreamt of owning a stand mixer since I started dreaming about our new huge beautiful kitchen. Firstly I can’t believe how close our kitchen is to being complete and secondly I can’t believe that I’ve finally got my hands on a stand mixer! The wonderful people at Vonshef gifted me this gorgeous black 1000w mixer so I can give you all a taster of what owning one is like.

Firstly, I didn’t dare bake with it. Didn’t want to splatter cake mixture up in it, just wanted it to be a pretty eye piece on the kitchen counters. But since it’s arrival Bradley has been asking me on the daily when I’m going to bake him something. So off onto Pinterest I was searching for a *simple* *easy* *not confusing strange ingredients* easter recipe! After much scrolling I found this one from Jennie at Scarlet Scorch Droppers which sounded like a total beginner like myself could easily follow , also her cake looked so wonderfully Instagramable I just had to give it ago.

And you know what, I think I did it justice!

How pretty is this bloody cake I made?! I don’t think I’ve ever made something this professional looking before (not to toot my own trumpet). Using the stand mixer made everything about baking so much easier. I’ve used small electric hand whisks before and thought that they pretty much did a decent job. But oh no, you haven’t tried anything until you’ve tried the ease and perfection of a gadget like this.

It had everything mixed together flawlessly within seconds. The last time I had seen butter and sugar mixed together in such a faultless way was on the Bake Off (which FYI I need to go on).

The mixer has 8 speed settings and 3 different accessories which is so brilliant because depending on what you’re mixing you’re going to need different speeds and attachments. This cake was a medium sponge mixture so I stuck to speeds 1-6 with the beater attachment. But the booklet has a whole page of recipe examples with what speeds and attachments that go along with it. A genius idea is the pulse option, instead of choosing a speed you hold the dial to P, which lets you keep an eye on your mixture to insure you don’t over process it, mixing for only 30 seconds at a time! Perfect for something like meringues.

The piece I’m most thankful for? The splash guard! Using any sort of electric whisk always makes a HUGE floury mess, but using the guard reduced that massively meaning less cleaning up to do and less wastage of flour. A gap in the splash guard means you can keep an eye on the mixture and easily add any extra ingredients in whilst it’s on.

It’s such a simple machine and certainly not intimidating to such a beginner like me. Now when everyone comes round and see’s it sat proudly on the counter top they think I mean serious baking business (I absolutely don’t!). I’m so excited for the new baking adventure this impressive machine is going to take me on. I’ve already been eyeing up some bread recipes (I actually got a B in my GCSE food technology… wouldn’t believe it though would you?!) because I have such fond memories of my Mum and Dad making yummy homemade warm bread when I was a kid, and I’d love to be able to do that for us.

Baking is also such a great gift. I cut up some slices of this cake to take to my neighbour’s, and also took some round to Bradley’s parents house. I’m hoping I can make another cake to take round to their’s for when we go round for our dinner on Easter Sunday since I know his Mum will be slaving over a roast dinner for us all!

Do you have a passion for baking? Do you own a stand mixer like mine? You can buy this in black, cream or red from Vonshef.   Whether you’re going to be baking regularly or just want a eye stopper gadget to accessorise your kitchen you really need one of these.

Look out for more baking posts both on here and over on my Instagram because I’ve now really got the buzz!