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Earlier this summer, Pinterest-friendly stand mixer giant KitchenAid quietly launched its KitchenAid Artisan Mini, a stand mixer that retains all of the beauty and horsepower of a classic KitchenAid mixer with a much smaller size and a cheaper price tag than their larger models. Compared to the classic KitchenAid mixer, the KitchenAid Mini features a smaller bowl (3.5-quarts as opposed to 5 or 6 quarts), is 10 to 15 pounds lighter than larger models, and is compatible with almost every KitchenAid attachment (but not, sadly, the ice cream maker).
It's also cheaper—in theory. On KitchenAid's website, the Mini runs $30 cheaper than the next largest model. But on Amazon, the Mini is actually $13 dollars more expensive than a 5-quart model. Amazon's prices are prone to change, of course, but the fact remains that this is not an appliance you choose for the value. You choose it for the size. [Edit note: some of the Mini models on Amazon are actually cheaper depending on the color choice.]
These sweeping videos of millennial types using the Mini in their tiny, expensive urban apartments suggests that, yes, the Mini can handle everything its bigger, older siblings can. (One video shows a gentleman using the Mini to make...cocktails.) I won't front: these videos made me a little jealous. I've never had the money or space for a KitchenAid mixer, and I've lost count of the times I've become infatuated with a recipe only to find I didn’t have the stand mixer necessary to pull it off. So I called KitchenAid and asked to give the Mini a spin. Could it do everything its older sister does? Even at this smaller size, would it be worth the counter space? And if the Mini could indeed pull off full recipes of cookies, would I have to eat all those cookies myself?
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I cleared the 96 square inches of counter space the Mini requires—a regular Artisan requires 132 square inches— right away and started cooking. I’d been swooning over a frozen peanut butter pie for months; the Mini let me turn my pie fantasies into reality. In the bowl, I mixed cream cheese, peanut butter, and brown sugar using the paddle attachment, first on low speed, then on high. The process was so, uh, smooth—even with a thick peanut butter in the mix, the Mini had no problem whipping all the ingredients into a creamy pie filling—that I started falling in love with the appliance then and there.
So I kept baking. The bowl was able to fit a full batch of our ultimate chocolate chip cookie dough (a batch that yields about 5 sheet pans’ worth). In fact, the Mini may have worked better than some larger KitchenAids because the paddle attachment reaches to the bottom of the bowl. (A common complaint about larger KitchenAid mixers is that those paddles don’t reach the ingredients at the bottom of the bowl due to their size.)
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Once these desserts started popping out, crowding my thoughts and counter, I got excited and decided I'd test the outer limits of a silky mix. How close could I fly to the sun before melting myself (or my butter)? I picked up a can of pistachio paste to find out.
I was making sandwich cookies, and needed the Mini's mixing prowess to blend the thick paste into both the cookie batter and the buttercream filling. The Mini excelled on both counts, and soon I had pistachio creamwiches that looked like homey Oreos but tasted like money.
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Wanting a big project for my final Mini test, I chose a big, hulking chocolate sheet cake. Following the recipe closely, I added all the dry ingredients into the bowl of the mixer at once. Would the bowl overflow? Would flour spray all over my kitchen? No and no—this Mini Moment kept on track! The batter blended into a smooth and pourable finished product; my attempt to thwart the KitchenAid Mini failed.
KitchenAid clearly packaged the Mini for the single-and-millennial crowd, but I think that's selling this appliance a little short. With the same high speed capabilities and yes, capacity, the Mini seems like a good option for any baked goods-obsessed household that wants a mixer at the ready for turning any moment into a baking moment. It took me only four Mini Moments (yes, I started calling these baking experiments Mini Moments, thus locking me into the KitchenAid cult, lock, stock, and Kool-Aid) to actually feel comfortable with baking. And that's a huge change from a small appliance.
