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Cookworks Hand Mixer with Bowl
by nickbrown60 After a rather heavy dough kneading session our rather lovely Kenwood mixer decided to give up on its life just after Christmas, we had worked it hard and it was hardly a surprise judging by the burning smells it was pumping out for a week before the event! Obviously we needed a new one as believe it or not, a lot of baking goes on in ... our house even though every creation turns into a disaster! Walking past Argos the following day I spotted this rather funky looking mixer in the window display for only £12.49 which seemed a bargain that I could not refuse. It was on offer for half the price of the standard catalogue price of £24.99 and I don't believe this offer is on anymore judging from the Argos website. We picked it up and back home we went to do some baking, the box was rather large being a mixer with a bowl built in and inside we found; * The mixer * Bowl and stand * Normal mixing whisks * Bread kneading hooks * And the instruction manual. *** About the Cookworks hand mixer with a bowl *** It's a rather basic looking food mixer with a bowl on a stand to allow handsfree mixing (No more aching arms for me - Yay!), it is made entirely of plastic on the outside which feels rather cheaply built (But what should I expect for being tight and spending so little on a food mixer eh?) The hand mixer itself is easy to hold and is of a good quality, the bowl however is very cheap to the touch but perfectly useable. The mixer has 5 mixing speeds and it is supplied with the standard whisks and two dough hooks for kneading dough. Setting up the mixer was extremely quick and easy; we simply gave the bowl and the whisks a quick wash and popped it all together. We were ready to make our Victoria sponge within a matter of minutes and it was simple, easy and initially seemed a good enough quality and value for money. *** Using the mixer *** In went the ingredients one by one as the mixer purred away, it is rather quiet in use but it does have that slightly cheap 'ringing' noise that is heard from some lesser quality food mixers. I believe this is the gearbox but hey, it works! The mixer seemed to be doing a good job at first but I soon realised that it was losing power and my cake batter was sticking to the inside of the whisks and slowing the motor down. A quick flick of the speed switch to full power slightly rectified the problem but I still was not impressed with the power. The cake mixture was hardly thick and the lack of power with this mixer was instantly noticed. As soon as I pulled it from the mix, the motor sped up to full power so I popped it back in and MMMERRRRRRR! The motor slowed down sufficiently to reduce the mixing process once again. It seems to me that the mixing whisks are badly designed to allow the substance being mixed to stick inside the whisk or it could just be a general lack of motor power. Don't get me wrong, I did manage to make my cake in the end and it has not got so little power that it cannot actually mix the ingredients together, it does mix them but it just takes longer and it can be frustrating! I thought mine might have been faulty but my grandmother had spotted this bargain in Argos also and hers is identical performance wise. We have used this for whipping cream for a trifle and for jobs like that it is fantastic, it quick and easy to use and the mixing bowl does actually turn itself if you leave it unattended. Unfortunately from my cake making experience I soon noticed that it actually had not mixed all of my ingredients together as when using the mixing stand the whisks don't actually touch the bottom of the bowl. There is actually about quarter of an inch of unmixed product at the bottom of the bowl after mixing with the stand in use and in my opinion this is just a pure lack of experience and design in the cake making department at Cookworks! *** Design, durability and reliability *** Now as I have mentioned above the mixing whisks do not sit anywhere near the bottom of the bowl when you use the stand. This leaves a lot of unmixed batter in the bottom when making cakes and it's always a disappointment when you are spooning the mixture out into a tray and finding unmixed flour at the bottom of the bowl! This is just a pure lack of good design and the product obviously has not been tested before going out for sale. We have now chucked the stand and bowl away as it was just totally useless. The bowl which is made of plastic is not the most durable. Isn't it normal to accidently touch the side of the bowl every now and then when using a food mixer? I would have thought so and I'm not the most coordinated of people around but I have not touched the sides of the bowl that often but the scars are there! The whole side of my plastic bowl is gouged and chipped from the whisks touching the sides, surely that plastic must have ended up in one of my delightfully fluffy (Delightfully hard resembling a biscuit) sponge?? That cannot be good at all. Even though we have thrown our stand away I used it enough to decide that I never want to use it again. It felt extremely cheaply built and it used to bend slightly if you pressed on it, the stand held the mixer too high from the bottom of the bowl and it was generally useless. However on the plus side the mixer was easy to attach to the stand and it was just as easy to remove. The motor in the hand mixer is obviously slightly weak and it does let out strange burning smells during use. It does get hot after about 3 minutes of whisking - especially if it's anything thicker than cream. The power cord into the mixer is long enough to use on the countertop and it feels good quality. *** Features *** 5 Motor speeds - The sliding switch on top of the unit controls the speed of the motor which works rather well when whipping cream or other thin consistency ingredients. The switch feels quite strong but it is hard to select the speed you want as the movement between the speeds is awfully small and it is hard to push it sideways. I cannot complain too much about the switch as it does turn it on and it continues to do so! Eject button - There is an eject button on top of the mixer to eject the mixing whisks. In my opinion this is the best designed part of this mixer as the button is rather large and it is extremely easy to press allowing easy removal of the whisks. Dough hooks - I have made a batch of bread rolls with this before I purchased my bread maker and in all honesty these worked better than I had expected. The dough hooks worked just fine and I ended up with nice dough which seemed perfect. The hand mixer was on for a good 10 minutes of kneading and it did get rather hot but it lived past this experience. *** Overall opinion *** In all honesty I'm certainly not a fan of this food mixer, it seems cheaply built and it is certainly not very well designed. The general idea of the automatic bowl and stand is a good one but Cookworks have not quite got it right. The mixer does lack power but it is just about useable when using it by hand without the stand. The whisks and the dough hooks seem very good quality and they appear slightly better than the ones we had with our last Kenwood mixer, if only the mechanical side of things were as good as the attachments! Would I recommend this to a friend? UMMM! Tricky question, I would if you are not planning on mixing more than once a week and if it's just for general use. For the price I would say it's a bargain but the bowl and stand turned out to be totally useless and you can pick a mixer up of the same quality as this one for much less money than I paid. If you're happy with the bowl and stand then this could be a winner but I doubt that you ever will be! The saying 'You get what you pay for', springs to mind ;) 2 stars from me! Thanks for reading İnickbrown60 Read the complete review |
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Cookworks Silver Hand Mixer
by louisechackett I have always enjoyed baking cakes but I don't particularly enjoy the mixing things by hand and so a few years ago I purchased the cookworks silver hand mixer to take away that burden! From memory it cost me around £8.00 which I thought was reasonable enough for a hand mixer. The mixer came packed in a small cardboard box and ... inside was the mixing unit itself and the whisks as well as another set of mixers which was apparently for beating dough....needless to say they got thrown to the back of my cupboard because I tend to make sweet cakes rather than breads and savoury items. The box also contained instructions for use but I think items such as these are pretty self explanatory anyway and so I threw them away too! The mixer is silver in colour which I just think looks that bit more modern although these days my cheap kettle and toaster are white so in retrospect it wouldn't have mattered had I got it in white anyway! It is a good size and features a chunky handle to hold for when you are mixing which I think is essential, especially if like me you allow a small child to use it when baking too. The mixer has five different numbers in which you can set it to with one being the least powerful mixing speed and five obviously being the most powerful. It also features a turbo button on the side which you can hold in to apparently give it a bit of an extra boost but I don't find this makes any difference at all! The cord on the mixer is perhaps around a metre in length which is plenty I feel as I always make sure I am baking on my work top where I have a plug near by anyway but this would allow you a certain element of flexibility I think. The whisks are a silver metal colour and slot in to the holes on the underside of the mixer very easily. They are also easily released after use using the eject button on the top of the mixer and are also easy to clean and store. I find that when I am using this mixer to mix up a cake mixture that number two or three is sufficient because otherwise it can get a bit too powerful and end up spraying cake mix all over my tiles and things! I do find it tricky to get the remaining cake mix off the whisks when I have finished mixing without covering my kitchen in the mixture too! Sometimes when I am making a cake I need to mix something up and then add more ingredients and then mix again and it is times like this that I really wish the mixer had a stand in which I could place it because I end up having to place it on my work top and then obviously half mixed cake mixture ends up covering my work top which just means more cleaning for me! I realise though that this is quite a cheap item and so I am expecting a bit much perhaps. I have owned this mixer for probably around four years now and it is still going strong. I bake regularly and so it has been used lots for that purpose as well as for beating Yorkshire pudding mixes or pancake mix and so I really think it has proved to be an excellent purchase! The hand mixer is small enough to fit in to one of my kitchen drawers too and so it is not something that is always out and cluttering up the work surfaces either. I would certainly recommend purchasing this mixer should you be looking for one. Thank you for reading my review! Read the complete review |
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Cookworks Hand Mixer with Bowl
by katyboo123 For Christmas I was given all manner of baking equipment from my girlfriend, friends, family; I'd asked for most of it, but one thing no one was planning on getting me was an Electric Mixer which I really, desperately needed - I had however asked for an iPod Nano, and when we went to collect it from the Argos superstore, they had an ... offer on - believe it or not it wasn't buy an iPod get a mixing bowl free(!) but it was pretty great. They had 10% off all Apple products (making the iPod cheaper than anywhere else) and if you spent over £100 you also got a £10 voucher to spend in store. The Cookworks Mixer with Bowl was £12.49 reduced by 50% from £24.99 and with the voucher cost a measly £2.49. Bargain! As I am a big kid it was a struggle knowing it was there wrapped up in beautiful paper beneath the tree, but when Christmas morning came, I tore it open and set about making a batch of cakes. The product is not an Electric Mixer as such - it's a stand, with a rotating base upon which you can secure the electric hand mixer provided. It also comes with a large capacity bowl which fits on to the stand converting it in to a Mixer. As well as two whisks, you get two dough hooks. The stand is pretty flimsy, lightweight with a pivotal arm to fix the hand mixer to; there is a grey button which allows the 'elbow' to tilt, but it's quite stiff and requires a bit of 'manipulation' (read: frustrated force!). It doesn't require any assembly though. The hand mixer is 200watt with 5 different speeds - though I have found speed number 1 is sufficient for mostly everything I've used it for. The bowl has a subtle spout shaped lip, so you can pour out mixture if required. The base allows the bowl to rotate however you must do this manually, it's not an automated motion. You can also detatch the hand mixer and just use it with any bowl, direct in the pan for soups, etc. My one major criticism, is that when using the stand and bowl provided, the whisks are shorter than other mixers I've used and they leave ingredient unmixed at the bottom and edges of the bowl, so I always give it a manual stir afterwards which seems to do the trick, but it's annoying! There's an eject button which easily removes the whisks / dough hooks when they are covered in mixture, so you don't need to pull them and get your hands dirty! Aside from that, there's not a lot else to say about the appearance - it's standard white in colour, it's sufficient in performance, just does the job basically - what more could you want? Plus it's pretty compact too, so for those tight on space and budget this is an excellent option; as standard, it comes with a 12 month guarantee (keep your receipt). At £2.49 this is probably the cheapest bit of kit I have! My apple corer costs more than that, but bear in mind that that's just the offer price. Full price this is about £25 - usually on special offer though at half price. Worth it, even at full price, and a fraction of the cost of other mixers - even hand mixers are more expensive. Definitely recommended. Read the complete review |
Cookworks Mixer |
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3 reviews Brand: Cookworks / Hand Mixer with a bowl and stand / Power: 200 watts / 5 speeds |
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3 reviews Manufacturer: Cookworks / Hand Mixer / Power: 120 watts / Speeds: 5 / Beater ejector button with safety feature / Chrome beaters |
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| Cookworks Mixer Recommendations 1 | ||
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