This is not my first Kenwood Chef, I learned how to bake as a child using one and that’s more decades ago than I care to mention – and that particular ageing Kenwood Chef is still in a cupboard somewhere and it still works. This Titanium Chef Baker XL updates the machine but is still very familiar to anyone who’s used one before and for the most part they’ve kept the good stuff and improved the not-so-good. The basic design remains the same and so you get a powerful and capacious mixer with a good range of accessories and therefore tasks it can complete. Our old Chef was made from cast metal, steel I think, and was very solidly constructed and very heavy. This one seems to be cast aluminium and therefore still feels solidly made but it’s much lighter, the only negative aspect is that much of the weight, presumably the motor and gears, is in the top section and so it feels top-heavy especially when you raise the arm to its full height. You get two bowls and they store one inside the other so you don’t need to find cupboard space and it’s really handy having the choice. The smaller one isn’t that much smaller but it’s handy for smaller quantities and tasks, like creaming butter and sugar together more quickly without chasing butter chunks around the bowl for minutes on end. The bigger one has a chunky handle and is great for pouring out your finished mix into baking tins with the provided spatula in your other hand to scrape out every last piece.

You also get a good compliment of attachments including the traditional ‘K’ beater, balloon whisk and dough hook and they’re all huge (compared to standard old-school Chef tools) and very sturdy. There’s also a Flexi Creaming Beater which is a specially shaped beater with a groove along the working edges that holds a flexible silicone blade-edge that scrapes the sides of the bowl as it works making sure none of those pesky butter chunks escape – and it really works! The only issue is that it’s so good at scraping the inner surface of the bowls it makes the whole machine rock back and forth and I discovered mine was walking across the worktop toward the edge. It’s not in a great hurry to dive off onto the floor but it’s worth ensuring you only use the Flexi Creaming Beater while you’re there to watch it.

The motor feels very powerful but hardly seems to strain under effort, it just keeps mixing, beating and creaming, and you’ve got decent control over the speeds using the rotary control. I’m assuming the speed control is now digitised because it’s not quite as direct a control as it used to be, the motor slides up or down the speeds rather than revving into action. You get the additional power points on the top and front of the Chef to attach extra tools and accessories and I discovered the top one accepts the liquidiser jug we already have from an old (maybe 80’s model) of Kenwood Chef, so it seems they’ve kept the same fitting. The covers on the power access points are held in place with magnets and just lift off which is a nice innovation, they used to have awkward latches, but you’ll want to keep little fingers well away from them of course. The whole top plate on the mixer is also removeable and replaceable with one of a range of colour options, so you can colour-coordinate your mixer to your kitchen dcor if you wish. You also get a splash guard which pushes onto the underside of the lift-able arm and covers the bowl, except for a lift-up flap, keeping splashes inside. It seems a bit flimsy but it’s very effective in use and should last as long as you take care of it.

The other standout feature is the built-in scales which lets you add ingredients straight to the bowl without having to weigh them out first. It works and it’s quite sensitive but being built into a moving and articulated mixer means they’re a bit prone to inaccuracy, they’re essentially weighing the whole machine and not just the bowl. So for example the scale is sensitive enough to detect the change in weight as the mixer is mixing and its weight is shifting back and forth. If you’re trying to add an ingredient while it’s mixing, for example folding flour into a batter mix, then it’s probably still advisable to weigh it out beforehand. The scale’s of most use when you’re adding together the preliminary ingredients or when you’ve paused the machine and can zero the scale to then add measured secondary ingredients.

Overall it’s still a fantastic machine for a home baker and feels like it could last for years and probably decades with some care. I know bakers often divide between the Kenwood Chef users and the KitchenAid users and although I like the retro-chic stylings of KitchenAid mixers they never seem as robust or practical as Kenwood Chefs do – so I’m staying on the Kenwood side of that fence!