Stand Mixer!
After I gave myself a toaster oven as a present, I decided that I absolutely also must have a stand mixer if I am going to resume baking. Of course my first thought is to look into getting another KitchenAid like I have in storage in the US. But whereas I bought my Artisan for about $200 back home, they retail for €525 (about $780) here! Not only was this totally out of my budget, but out of principal I will not pay almost 4x for something identical to what I have in the US. I even put out a call on Facebook asking expat friends what they did in my situation. Responses ranged from getting an electrical transformer for their US-spec KitchenAids (even more expense), to just mixing by hand since there is no cost-effective replacement (I don't know how to mix by hand anymore!... just kidding... sort of).
After a lot of research into hand held mixers (I got tired just thinking about using those), and considering bringing my check-in sized KitchenAid over on my next trip back, I settled on a Bosch Kitchen Machine. It was actually ranked just after the KitchenAid Classic by Cook's Illustrated, the Consumer Reports of recipes and cooking equipment, and was said to outperform the KitchenAid in kneading dough. Plus at €55 (about $80) on Amazon.de with free shipping to the Netherlands, I thought this might be the first "great value" I found in Europe. Much less than what a KitchenAid would cost even at home, and comparable to some low-end hand mixers that I found in Eindhoven stores. And the Bosch turns out to be really cute too. Here it is at work on creaming butter and sugar for an apple cake.
I really like the Bosch. It is cute and compact, fitting in really small spaces on top of my mini fridge or on top of an Ikea kitchen cart. It does a pretty good job of mixing everything in the bowl, despite not having the calibrating screw on the KitchenAid. And despite being totally made of plastic, it feels well constructed. The head locks into three positions with a determined click, and there's a "parking space" for the head too, so it always rests at the same position when you turn off the machine. Very German.
The attachments are the same as what comes with the KitchenAid: a whisk, a dough hook, and a beater for heavier stuff. If you look at the picture above, the beater is made of wires, quite unlike the "paddle attachment" of the KitchenAid. I was skeptical that it would be sturdy enough, but it's done pretty well with the cake and the batch of chocolate chip cookies I made first. I do find that butter gets stuck within the wires more so than the paddle attachment, but it's not something that a couple swipes with a spatula can't fix. You can also get other attachments like a blender, food processor, meat grinder, grain grinder, and ice cream maker to plug into the machine's two other orifices.
So far, I can recommend the Bosch as a replacement for the KitchenAid in Europe.
