Cake mixer
Many bakers in Kenya will rush to make a buying decision based on price comparison of different cake mixer sellers. But what are the risks?
Quality of ring gears and Main gears
A high quality cake mixer like Bakewave brand has a total of 11 gears;
1. Stainless steel ring gear. The work is to rotate the shaft which in turn rotates the relevant mixing arm. These mixing arms can be the beater, whisk or hook.
2. Main gear/ bronze gear. This is rotated by the motor. This main gear in-turn rotates 9 stainless steel gears.
3. 9 stainless steel gears. Their work is to allow changing of the mixing speed from speed 1, 2 and 3 and vice versa.
On the other hand cheap mixers use the following;
- Cast Iron Ring gear.
- Brass main gear.
- Cast iron gear.
Gear quality impact on maintenance costs.
Whereas the Bakewave mixers will last more than 5 years without changing any gears. For cheap mixers this gears will start wearing out after the first 6 months. The cost of replacing any one gear is kes 15,000. That means regularly replacing 11 gears will cost you kes 400,000 in a span of 5 years. Making a purchase on cake mixer prices is not a wise move. Check the video below for more details.
What do I need to know before buying a cake mixer?
2. Do not confuse a cake mixer with a dough mixer. A cake mixer has three detachable arms namely hook, beater and whisk
There’s is also the overall confusion on cake mixers being referred as dough mixers and vice versa.
To clarify this matter lets briefly examine the three basic types of mixers:
What are the three basic types of mixers?
- Dough mixers also known as spiral mixers -used for hard dough for bread, buns, rolls, scones, pizza, mandazi, pastry, and chapati. They are heavily build and with a powerful motor at least 1.5Kw for 30kg to about 9Kw for 160kgs.
- Horizontal Dough Mixers – Big large mixers for mixing hard dough for bread, buns, rolls, scones, pizza, mandazi, chapati etc. usually on a larger scale for example 200kgs!
- Cake mixers also known planetary mixers. These are also divided into two broad categories:
- Small sizes for home or light mixing of decorating cream; hand mixers, stand mixers, tabletop mixers and cake decorating cream mixers. Usually 5L bowl capacity and Kw around 300Watts
- Commercial cake mixers-From 10L bowl capacity to 20L, 30L, 40L, 60L, 80L, 100L and Kw from 0.65Kw, 1.1Kw, 1.5Kw, 2Kw, 3Kw, 4Kw,etc respectively.
3. Don’t use the hook as a dough mixer for heavy commercial purposes like bread mixing. It will reduce the lifespan of your cake mixer significantly since the cake mixer has very little power(Kw).You will overwork the motor. Instead if you are baking dough related products like bread, buns, scones etc. buy a dough mixer instead.
4. Avoid concluding your purchase decision on a price angle only. Check the quality and specifications. In Kenya for example, after talking to several cake bakers we have discovered shocking details. Some are forced to close down their bakeries because of very serious challenges of buying cake cheap cake mixers.
Is it better to mix by hand or mixer?
The answer depends on the scale of baking. If you are just baking for fun at home you can mix by hand using a hand mixer or whisk would be okay if you have not invested in a cake mixer yet. Also no one will expect a very high quality cake from you.
But for commercial purposes whether its a birthday cake or cake slices you are preparing on behalf of a wedding, expectations are high. For this reason lets examine benefits of a cake mixer.
What are the benefits of a mixer?
1.Completely breaks down the sugar into a fine paste together with the margarine. This ensures a fine texture of the final mix giving you that fluffy, smooth high quality cake. This avoids sugar grains in the mouth as customers enjoy your cake.
2.Reduces mixing labor by over 95%.Have you ever tried to mix only about 20L of cake by hand. Its one of the most exhausting and painful jobs to do. Even with this fatigue you will end up with a poorly mixed cake with sugar grains all over that give a grinding feeling in the mouth.
3.Saves a lot of time.
What size of mixer do i need for a cake? How do i choose a cake mixer?
It will depend on the scale of your cake production. If you are baking at home for fun or just a few cake orders you can consider 5L.However for commercial use like more that 40L of cake mixer per day you can consider from cake mixer 10L,20L,30L,40L,60L depending on the production target.
How many watts is a good cake mixer? Is higher watts better for mixer?
Definitely yes if you are in commercial baking. This is because incase the mixer is overloaded, this will avoid overworking and overheating the motor that can cause permanent damage to the motor.In that case you need to get a new motor or rewind the existing one.
Which brand is best for mixers
In Kenya today, the Bakewave brand is the best because :
a. For cake mixer is has a reinforced metallic body structure that ensures that the metallic bowl fastening latches cannot break .This is because if these latches break the machine cannot be used anymore even if new. This is because its very difficult to weld stainless steel.
b. For dough spiral mixers Bakewave is using the belt and motor system that is 95% cheaper to maintain than any other dough mixers in the Kenyan market.
CONCLUSION:
This mixer is ideal for a startup cake bakery that is doing less products. However, for mid-level commercial baking consider our cake mixer machine 20L.
