SHOP MY KITCHEN
If you love to bake, I recommend a stand mixer. It can do so many tasks with a stand mixer. A Kitchen-Aid is the gold standard but there are a lot of brands out there. I use mine for mixing cookie dough like Chewy Toffee Cookies. I also use the stand mixer for shredding chicken for Rosemary Chicken Salad Sandwiches.
KitchenAid Flex Edge Beater
If you have a stand mixer, you really should get one of these flex edge beaters, which saves time while you’re mixing dough. The one drawback of a stand mixer is having to stop the machine midway through to scrape the sides and the very bottom of the bowl.
A Flex Edge Beater eliminates that by acting as a spatula itself. It gets all the dough incorporated from the sides and bottom so you don’t have to.
Obviously you need half sheet pans for baking cookies like Classic Peanut Butter Cookies. But, half sheet pans also come in handy for making savory things like Spicy Shrimp Nachos.
Use spatulas for mixing up dough or scraping sauce out of a food processor. My favorite sauce for making in the food processor is perfect on nachos or for making quesadillas.
Making baked goods always turns out better when you’re weighing your ingredients instead of relying on the measuring cup method. You’ll want exact amounts of flour when you’re making treats like Lemon Shortbread Cookies or Pumpkin Spice Scones.