Meet my newest sous chef.

She's here!! Standing 16" and weighing 22 lb., my beautiful girl is here!

My new stand mixer, that is, and just in time for the holiday baking season. I've had my eye on KitchenAid sales for years, never willing to shell out for the big leagues, always thinking I'll just wait until I register for my someday-future wedding. But then over the years, I found myself having more reasons to want a stand-mixer: fabulous pasta roller attachments, the ease of whipping cream and egg whites while attending to other items in the kitchen...then they started making colors -- such beautiful colors! I've always been a classic girl myself, so I always figured I'd get the standard white mixer that my mom has, or perhaps chrome if I was feeling wild. But my heart melted when I saw this apple green last year, and it was a done deal.

Three things this year contributed to the "final push" that convinced me to get the mixer:

1. The 50 minutes I spent kneading two loaves of bread dough only to find hardly any gluten had been developed after the bread had baked. (Recipes say, "It's easy to over-knead dough with a stand mixer -- don't let it go more than 2 minutes," but, "It's virtually impossible to over-knead dough by hand -- it'll take at least 20 min. per loaf.")
2. An abundance of KitchenAid sales on RueLaLa that tempted me throughout the year.
3. The untimely death of the $6 hand mixer I had bought at Wal-Mart when moving out after college: it was a ghastly battle with the peanut butter side of the Snickers cookies I made for Halloween.

Now, a hand mixer is useful for many things that don't require hauling out the 22-lb. stand mixer, but it was enough of a sign for me. I fortunately found one on super-sale and could enjoy my new toy with less guilt (financially speaking, ignoring the buttery side effects).

Stay tuned for a number of "remixed" holiday treats, reinvented versions of old favorites.