The Kitchen Aid Mixer and The Butter Cookies

I grew up in a house where each Christmas my brother and I "helped" make butter cookies.  We looked forward to the process of every year; making the dough, waiting for it to chill (hours seemed like days), cutting the cookies (the angel from 1930 was my favorite), frosting them and adding just the right amount of sprinkles.  One year (after college...yes I was in my 20's) my mom actually did not make the cookies and Christmas was just not the same.  We took the butter cookie tradition very seriously. 

Eventually, butter cookies were made for all sorts of holidays, whichever we had the cookie cutters for.  We always made the cookies with an electric hand mixer, licking the mixers when we were done.  We never used a Kitchen Aid mixer, we never had one.  Over time, I became a bit stuck in my ways (shocking, I know) and on principle used a pastry blender, fork, or an electric hand mixer when baking.  Nothing more...

When Nick moved in, he brought along his Kitchen Aid mixer and, I do not have an electric hand mixer here.  This Thanksgiving, my mother asked me to make the butter cookies as a dessert.  To make the dough, you need to mix in a pound of butter (when you double the recipe, but I figure if you are going for it, you really need to go for it).  To mix a pound of butter by hand it would take some time and a LOT of elbow grease.  So I decided to break down and use the Kitchen Aid mixer...


All Ingredients Added

The results were AMAZING...sadly, I am a convert.  I know, I caved pretty quickly.  The mixer made swift work of the dough.  At one point though, I thought I might be killing the motor because the dough is pretty thick and the mixer slowed down a bit, but the Kitchen Aid powered through.


Working its magic!

All Wrapped Up

I will post the finished product after they have been fully decorated in a Thanksgiving way!

Everything worked so well that afterward, I made brownies with the Kitchen Aid mixer, which clearly could have been made stirring with a wooden spoon.  Again though, the batter, made from scratch, blended together faster than I could have done with my old school ways...

My one Kitchen Aid caveat, since I still have the smallest Beacon Hill kitchen, the Mixer spends most of its time in the storage under the stairs.  Unless I have pretty thick batter to make (like the butter cookies), I will probably stick with traditional methods like a spoon, a fork or a pastry blender.  However, when I get my big kid house and the Mixer can sit out on the counter, and not take up a precious amount of counter space, I will use it for everything under the sun I am sure!