I made cake, bread and even butter in the KitchenAid 7 Quart Stand Mixer — here's what happened

There’s something about the color, style, and robust reliability of a KitchenAid mixer that makes them some of the best stand mixers you can buy, putting this appliance high on the wish list of many home bakers. There are lots of KitchenAid mixers to choose from and the KitchenAid 7 Quart/ 6.6 Liter Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is one of the larger, more powerful models.

This mixer is built for batch baking, whether you need to send endless cupcakes to school bake sales or enjoy cooking up multi-layered cakes for family celebrations. I’ve tested and reviewed a lot of mixers over the years, but I think this might be the largest capacity mixer I’ve tried. So I set it up in my own kitchen and put it to work.

Overall I found it to be incredibly capable, with ample capacity for larger batches. Okay, so it can’t rival a standard KitchenAid Artisan mixer on the looks front. But it’s still available in a selection of colors, so it’s far from boring or ugly.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stand Mixer review: Price and availability

The KitchenAid 7 Quart/ 6.6 Liter Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is one of the larger KitchenAid mixers you can buy, so it goes without saying that it’s also one of the more expensive. It retails at $599.99/ £899.

It’s an investment-level kitchen appliance that’s built for big batches. If you’re just making standard home recipes in regular amounts, you could save a lot of money by choosing one of the medium size KitchenAid mixers instead.

You can pick up the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer for around $499/ £469. It still offers an ample 5 quart/ 4.8 liter capacity that’ll be more than suitable for most home bakers.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stand Mixer review: Design

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My first impression of this mixer was that although it’s taller than your average stand mixer, it doesn’t take up as much counter space as I feared it might. In fact, I’d say it doesn’t take up much more than a standard mixer.

It is well built and sturdy, which does of course translate into it being heavy, but I expected that. As long as you don’t intend to keep lifting it in and out of a cupboard, then this won’t be much of an issue.

Aside from it having a larger capacity and more power, one of the most noticeable differences between this and a standard KitchenAid mixer is that instead of tilting the top of the mixer to move attachments into and out of the bowl, the design of this one is such that you move the bowl up and down via a lever.

The bowl has two side supports that slot onto pins at the sides of the mixer, then you have to press hard onto the back of the bowl to snap a third pin into a spring latch. There’s definitely a knack to it, but once I’d done it a couple of times, it all became second nature.

When in position, you move the bowl up or down via the bowl lift lever at the back and it’s this action that replaces the standard tilting head that you’ll be more familiar with if you’ve used any brand of tilting head mixer.

Removing the bowl is easier than getting it into place, you just lift it upwards by the handle and it comes straight off. The speed control lever is at the side and is similar to that on virtually all KitchenAid mixers. It starts with a half speed option and then slides from 1 through 10.

In my review sample, the accessories included a flat metal beater for mixing and folding in ingredients. There’s a double flex edge beater for mixing cakes, frostings and the like. A standard dough hook is for kneading bread dough, while the whisk will whip up cream and egg whites.

A clear plastic splash guard, also known as a pouring shield is included for times when you might be mixing things that are likely to splash and cause a mess. It clicks onto the top of the stainless steel bowl, but when I tried to attach it, I found it tough to click into place. I imagine the rubber catches that attach it to the bowl will loosen over time though.

Like other KitchenAid mixers, a round attachment hub on the front of the mixer allows you to use one of the many optional attachments with this mixer. These include things like a meat grinder, spiralizer, and pasta press.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stand Mixer review: Performance

Flex edge beater

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To make a cake batter you can use the flat beater or the flex edge beater. The flex edge scrapes the mixture from the side of the bowl as it mixes, so I used it in the hope I wouldn’t have to stop the mixer too often to scrape it down myself.

First, I creamed together my room-temperature butter with the sugar, and I only stopped it once to scrape the sides down. Then I slowly added my eggs, followed by the flour. I did have to scrape the sides a couple of times, but on the whole it mixed the batter perfectly. My cake baked very well and was super light and fluffy.

KitchenAid claims this mixer has enough capacity to make ten dozen cupcakes in one mix. I made a six-egg cake mixture which is about enough for three dozen cupcakes. And by the standards of most home baking recipes, this is a large mix, but it was child's play for this mixer. And while there was still plenty of space in the bowl, I think mixing up enough cake batter for ten dozen cupcakes in one go, might not be very practical.

Whisk

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To put this whisk attachment through its paces I whipped up a whopping 3.8 pints/ 1.8 liters of heavy cream. I added the splash guard to be sure my kitchen didn’t get splattered with droplets of cream. But in the end there was very little splashing.

It only took four minutes to create a light and fluffy whipped texture, which for this volume of cream is pretty impressive. During the four minutes I gradually increased the speed, and as the cream began to thicken I ramped it up to full speed. At this point I kept a very close eye on it and stopped it immediately when it had thickened enough.

By the time the cream had thickened, its volume had increased a lot and it was only an inch below the top of the whisk, so I think this is almost the full capacity for cream. And given that there’s only two of us living in my home, it won’t surprise you that I don’t actually need this much cream. So, I decided to keep going and turn it into homemade butter.

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To go from cream to butter you simply keep whisking. I left it on full speed, only stopping it a couple of times to scrape the sides down. It only took a few more minutes for the fat to separate from the buttermilk and clump together on the whisk.

When the fat clumped together it took me a bit by surprise and thank goodness I had the splash guard on, because all of a sudden the buttermilk started splashing. It still made a mess though, because the splash guard doesn’t completely surround the bowl, which was a bit frustrating.

Despite the splashing and the clumping on the whisk, the mixer remained firm on the counter and didn’t show any signs of being under strain.

If you want to make butter, look up a recipe as there’s a process of washing the excess buttermilk out of the butter that’s important in creating a great finished product. Once I’d done that though I had 2lbs/ 900g butter and 24 fl.oz/ 700ml buttermilk.

Flat beater

I put two thirds of the butter back in the mixer with a generous spoon of salt flakes and the cooked garlic from a whole roasted bulb. Then I used the flat beater to mix it all up into a delicious garlic butter.

The beater worked well, mixing and whipping the heavy butter and I now have a plentiful supply of homemade garlic butter in my freezer.

Dough hook

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I made a 2 lb batch of pizza dough using the dough hook. Once the flour, yeast and water had come together I let the mixer knead the dough on a low speed for around seven minutes. There wasn’t a hint of instability when kneading the dough. The mixer confidently took care of the task, saving me from getting an arm ache.

The bowl had plenty of space for a bigger batch, in fact my 2 lb ball of dough looked like a very small amount in this large capacity mixer. It kneaded well nonetheless.

In terms of noise, it’s not a loud mixer. When I was whisking the cream I measured the noise level at speed 6 which was around 75dB.

Cleaning

All the accessories and the stainless steel bowl are safe to go in the dishwasher, which really does make cleaning super easy. Compared to the KitchenAid Artisan, which doesn't allow its attachments to go through the dishwasher, I found that the Bowl-Lift was a lot more convenient to use.

I alternated washing by hand and throwing it all in the dishwasher, depending on how dirty everything was, or how lazy I was feeling. Both methods work well and the body of the mixer is easy to keep clean with a quick wipe after every use. Be aware though, if your dishwasher is short on space, the bowl might struggle to fit inside.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stand Mixer review: Comparison

As I already mentioned earlier in this review, if you don’t need such a large capacity you could save some money and go for the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer instead. It’s available for around $499/ £469. The capacity is ample for the majority of home baking recipes and the performance is excellent too. And it’s arguably a prettier appliance to have on your counter.

Alternatively, if you prefer the idea of the bowl-lift design, instead of the tilting head. The bowl lift model also comes in a 5.5 quart/ 5.6 liter version. The mixer itself is the same overall size with virtually the same technical specifications, but it has a smaller bowl and a slightly different set of accessories. And importantly, it’s around $150/ £150 cheaper.

KitchenAid 7-Quart Stand Mixer review: Verdict

The KitchenAid 7 Quart/ 6.6 Liter Bowl-Lift Stand Mixer is the KitchenAid to buy if you regularly like to batch bake or cater to a crowd. It’s a big step up from a standard KitchenAid mixer but it still manages to retain some of that desirable KitchenAid colorful style, albeit with more of an industrial edge.

It’s capable and robust with a lengthy warranty and I certainly can’t fault its performance. It doesn't shy away from being best-suited to those who take baking very seriously, so I wouldn't mark it down for its size and bulk, but for the majority of home bakers, a standard KitchenAid Artisan Mixer will suffice.