Kitchen Stuff: The Handheld Mixer

In a small kitchen, you don’t need a lot of equipment to cook great food. Still, you do need some pots, pans, utensils, and dishes–obviously. In the BGSK book, you’ll find a bare bones list of necessary tools, but I’ve long wanted to bring you a similar resource on the web.

So we’re going one by one, stocking up our virtual pantries and maybe our real ones too.

Over the weekend, we celebrated my mom’s birthday. While I zested lemon for the batter, my sister Kate tried to cream three-quarters of a stick of butter in a very old handheld mixer in my sister Jill’s kitchen. Once the cake (raspberry-swirled lemon cake with lemon cream cheese icing) was in the oven, we realized we’d had a really weird case of kitchen blindness. Jill has a stand mixer out on the counter.

The cake turned out great without the stand mixer’s super powers though. Handheld mixers are hardly as brawny, but they get the job done. And though stand mixers, particularly those in beautiful hues, make a generous housewarming present if you move into an actual house, when you’re cooking in a small apartment kitchen, they simply take up too much counter or cabinet space to justify their $400 price tag. That’s why, if you bake even a few times a year, I recommend directing your love to a much more accessible handheld mixer, one costs less than $40. You may have to beat your butter and eggs for a few extra seconds, and you’ll likely have to replace the mixer every four years when its motor peters out. But in the meantime, you won’t be put off by buttercreams or meringues-whether because you don’t own a mixer or because you don’t want to pull your heavy stand mixer out of storage.

(It should be noted, of course, that if you’re completely baking equipment phobic, you can always cream butter and whip cream with your spatula or whisk and your very strong arm.)

Here’s what you’ll make with your cheap and nimble handheld mixer:

• Creamy Mango Pudding
• Peanut Butter Cookie Brownies
• Peppermint Meringues