And God Said... "LET THERE BE KITCHENAIDS"

So for the last couple years I've been playing around with some serious baking. I've always loved doing it and I find it quite relaxing after a hectic work week. It makes me think of my mom, sister and grandma. And Mace has been very encouraging of this passion of mine. Of course he is the one that usually benifits from the goodies I make so I think he has a dual purpose. So for this reason we decided to go in 50/50 and buy some nifty kitchen gadgets that we'll both use for the rest of our lives. I'm talking some serious toys here.

I had an older Kitchenaid plain and simple stand mixer for the last couple years and while it did anything I asked of it I could tell it was starting to lose its will to survive especially when I made Divinity. Figuring I would be baking for the rest of my life in some capacity we decided to upgrade to a fancy schmancy 575 watt 6 quart professional series Kitchenaid stand mixer. All I can say is OMG!!! I've been playing with it for the past week and love it! I've made pasta, chiffon cake w/ super fluffy orange frosting, a couple batches of Divinity right after another, and pizza dough to die for. And I'm planning on using it this evening to make dinner rolls and cinamon rolls to feed 40 people for tomorrow's family bbq. I tell you its fabulous and I'm not quite sure how I lived so long without it. Mine looks just like this one --->

Before buying the monster of stand mixers, we also decided to try a Kitchenaid professional series food processor. Again OMG!!! We've been shredding potatoes for hash browns, carrots for salads, and producing fresh salsa for when we had tacos the other night. This think has everything but the kitchen sink! Two weeks ago I made a pie crust that literally melted in your mouth with this sucker and I'm never going to use a bowl and fork again to make crust. Mace has also been using this like crazy and is really finding an interest in cooking and baking as well. Its kind of fund having something to do together in the evenings. I'll have to start taking pictures of my goodies and posting them on here.

With these two gadgets I seriously think I could open up a local bakery and do well but that will be later on in life. The good news though is that these two babies will last a lifetime and hopefully I'll be able to pass them on to my daughters if I'm so blessed if/when I have kids. As if I needed extra encouragement to spend time in the kitchen. I'm like a little kid in a candy shop now and keep scouring the Food Network website for new and interesting recipes to try out. So if any of you have any suggestions let me know... I'm giddy and totally ready for some baking challenges!