ottawa foodies

Hey, I just went to KitchenVirtue's site and the first thing I saw was this!

www.kitchenvirtue.com

Anyone use this? Does it work as advertised? This would seem to solve a pretty major issue with the Kitchen Aid. I've always complained about this, and always thought as a result that Kitchen Aid was "not all that".

Looks interesting. I question their statement that it's easier on the motor by not requiring stopping to scrape the bowl and then starting back up. Wouldn't the rubber produce more drag, and thus be harder on the motor?

Yeah, that is a suspicious claim, particularly given that the wear on my motor at least comes from the use of the dough hook (e.g., with a stiff rye dough), not with the paddle whipping up a pound cake.

Still, it looks like a good idea--the scraping is a hassle because not so much because it is time consuming but instead because it is just awkward...

surprised more people haven't seen these - I think they've been around for quite some time. I gave one to my sister-on-law last week - she uses her KA mixer all the time. Will let you guys know what she says. :)

They have been around for a while. I got mine about a year ago after having read about it on several baking blogs (and not yet being available in Canada). I do have to say it is great!! It does work nicely, just as advertised and definitely cuts down almost completely the scraping of the bowl. I've only had to do a bit of extra scraping if the bowl is really, really full and the batter is almost over the top edge of the beater blade itself. The one thing I did have to do was adjust the height of the bowl to accommodate the scraping arms of the blade. The change in height hasn't affected the dough hook or whisk attachment functions. The instructions were found on the Kitchen Aid website and were very easy to do. I got mine at CA Paradis and they had a wide selection for all sorts of mixers, not just the KA.

I would worry about keeping the attachment clean, as the interface between rubber and metal seems like a place that would be very hard to get clean once it's dirty.

I find I don't have to scrape the side of my KitchenAid very much if I crank the speed to high once or twice, which seems to swish stuff around enough. I can see this attachment would be excellent for folding operations.

The beater blade is not metal it is plastic. At first I wasn't too keen on this, but over a year's use has posed no problems at all. I haven't found any issues with keeping it clean either, although I always soak, then wash mine as soon as I can. I also haven't used it with anything that would really stain the colour. I mainly use it for cake batters.

I just took a closer look at how the blade is designed. The rubber scraping section is one piece that is on the flat outer side of the beater itself. The rubber goes smoothly from one side of the flat section to the other with the blade of rubber scrapter sticking out the middle - all one piece. There is no groove that the rubber scraper could be attached to (or at least it is not at all visible since it may be located under the rubber itself). The transition from the rubber to plastic is very smooth and doesn't appear to have any area that would trap food.