liz stevens
Lovin' The Homestead
Many have seen pictures of this mixer and there have been some blogs from users. But not too many have written about how it works. Many look at the price and wonder why it cost as much as a heavy duty chef quality electric mixer. Yet it is one of the most popular selling products for Cottage Craft Works.
Cottage Craft Works is a back-to-basics general store featuring many Amish made products such as the Little Dutch Maid Mixer. One of the reasons it has become so popular is that it is one of the only hand crank appliances built commercial tough enough to hold up, yet it is easy to use and clean. It was designed and made by an Amish gentleman to process large amounts of mashed potatoes and other mixes and breads for Amish weddings and other large gatherings.
Because it is hand cranked, The Little Dutch Maid has become very popular for Preppers, and self-sufficient living. It is totally off grid, yet it will perform as well as it's electric counterparts. The Little Dutch Maid has also crossed over in popularity into the main stream for other events such as cook off competitions, church camps, and other locations where electricity may not always be available or dependable. Some for people who just want a simple yet high quality appliance.
We wanted to put our hands on one to put it through the paces to see why so many have fallen in love with this hand cranked appliance even in regular home kitchens.
As soon as ours arrived and we lifted the base out of the box we quickly understood the quality and the price. It felt like we just stepped back into a period when American made products were built to last forever. This little machine is truly built heavy duty. A thick powder coated metal based is accompanied by a thick heavy duty hand crank. The drive hub is made of thick Stainless Steel which is way oversized from anything else you will see on the market today. Without a motor to eventually burn up, there is simply not much that can go wrong with this mixer base. The gears turn smooth the simple high and low speeds are changed by moving the hand crank up or down, so no transmission here to wear out.
This mixer base itself should outlast even the best high end electric mixers by two or three times their replacement cost. Even the plastic bowl shows the high quality parts that only Bosh makes, and it too has replaceable parts. It is made of a flexible plastic that will bounce off the floor if dropped instead of cracking. It may need to be replaced over time just from heavy use.
The attachments are heavy duty as well, they do work off a simple poly gear system that rotates around the bowl top, but it is all Bosh high end quality.
We made several recipe products with the mixing bowl and the optional food processor shredder and slicer attachment. We like that the drive works from the bottom, thus there is no overhead motor assembly to interfere with adding ingredients. We also liked the two piece lid assembly which allows for a splash guard to remain in place when the main lid is removed to add the ingredients.
We found that most of our applications didnt really need the splash guard as we have to use on our large electric stand mixer. The Little Dutch Maid attachments tend to pull the mixes down instead of pulling them up and out the sides as our electric mixer does. The slower RPMs also keep the splatter form occurring, not always the case with our electric stand mixer. Surprisingly we were done mixing a cake mix much quicker than we ever would have anticipated.
The other thing we noticed is the Little Dutch Maid base although heavy to where it wont walk off the counter when cranking, is relative easy to handle to move and place on a shelf. Our large stand mixer and food processor are much heavier and harder to move from the back counter over to our work counter, in fact we just dont take the time to break them out to use unless we have a large batch to do. It is easier to just do it by hand or use a hand held electric mixer.
This doesnt say much for our $1000 investment to have two machines setting and taking up so much counter space that we hardly use except maybe during the Holidays. On the other hand we can see where the Little Dutch Maid Mixer is very convenient easy to clean and store on a pantry shelf.
The switch out between the mixing bowl and the food shredder is very simple and quick. It takes one hand to turn the spindle to locate the flat blade insert into the hub and the other hand to align the hub pins with the slots in the bottom of the attachment, then the attachment turns and locks into place.
Not having the electric interlock system on the food processor also makes it much easier to lock down without having to be precisely being in the notch for the machine to work.
The mixing bowl comes with two wire whisk and the whisk gear assembly. These snap in and out for easy cleaning and optional cookie paddles can be used in place of the whisk. The heavy duty dough hook also comes with the mixer bowl.
http://www.cottagecraftworks.com/images/little-dutch-maid-beater-assembled.jpg
The optional Bosh made food processor comes with three blades, two of them are reversible and provide thick and thin slices, and then a grater blade provides the option of fine or coarse processing of such things as cabbage slaw. The third blade allows French fires to be cut from a potato, although they will be short since the supply tube like all food processors only allows quarter sized potato wedges.
We were amazed at how evenly and prefect the vegetable slices came out. You could actually display them as a garnish. The slower RPM does a much nicer job in the slicing process than our electric processor which tends to mangle or chop our vegetable slices up.
We were impressed how the machine stayed in place on the counter, the only time we had to place a hand on the base was when we were in the final stages of our bread mix, even then we didnt have to apply pressure to hold it down as it wasnt as much about the base walking, but more to keep the base from pulling toward us when the crank was being pulled against the thick dough.
We were also impressed with how easy the machine cranked, the handle length seems to be portioned very well to provide the maximum leverage without become fatigued the arms or hands. Again the two speed system is very simple and easy to change the crank from high to load. This allows the cranking speed to stay the same so there is no reason to wear you out trying to crank faster for whipping.
Overall we were very pleased with the performance and are very proud to be able to offer such a high quality long lasting American made product. Even with the imported Bosh attachments this is something that every self sufficient off-grid or even a regular main stream person should consider purchasing. Even at the price Cottage Craft Works is close to $200 less than one of the other popular online retailers selling the Little Dutch Maid under its original name Troycraft Mixer
You can purchase The Little Dutch Maid Off-Grid Hand Crank Mixer at this link at Cottage Craft Works .com
Cottage Craft Works is a back-to-basics general store featuring many Amish made products such as the Little Dutch Maid Mixer. One of the reasons it has become so popular is that it is one of the only hand crank appliances built commercial tough enough to hold up, yet it is easy to use and clean. It was designed and made by an Amish gentleman to process large amounts of mashed potatoes and other mixes and breads for Amish weddings and other large gatherings.
Because it is hand cranked, The Little Dutch Maid has become very popular for Preppers, and self-sufficient living. It is totally off grid, yet it will perform as well as it's electric counterparts. The Little Dutch Maid has also crossed over in popularity into the main stream for other events such as cook off competitions, church camps, and other locations where electricity may not always be available or dependable. Some for people who just want a simple yet high quality appliance.
We wanted to put our hands on one to put it through the paces to see why so many have fallen in love with this hand cranked appliance even in regular home kitchens.
As soon as ours arrived and we lifted the base out of the box we quickly understood the quality and the price. It felt like we just stepped back into a period when American made products were built to last forever. This little machine is truly built heavy duty. A thick powder coated metal based is accompanied by a thick heavy duty hand crank. The drive hub is made of thick Stainless Steel which is way oversized from anything else you will see on the market today. Without a motor to eventually burn up, there is simply not much that can go wrong with this mixer base. The gears turn smooth the simple high and low speeds are changed by moving the hand crank up or down, so no transmission here to wear out.
This mixer base itself should outlast even the best high end electric mixers by two or three times their replacement cost. Even the plastic bowl shows the high quality parts that only Bosh makes, and it too has replaceable parts. It is made of a flexible plastic that will bounce off the floor if dropped instead of cracking. It may need to be replaced over time just from heavy use.
The attachments are heavy duty as well, they do work off a simple poly gear system that rotates around the bowl top, but it is all Bosh high end quality.
We made several recipe products with the mixing bowl and the optional food processor shredder and slicer attachment. We like that the drive works from the bottom, thus there is no overhead motor assembly to interfere with adding ingredients. We also liked the two piece lid assembly which allows for a splash guard to remain in place when the main lid is removed to add the ingredients.
We found that most of our applications didnt really need the splash guard as we have to use on our large electric stand mixer. The Little Dutch Maid attachments tend to pull the mixes down instead of pulling them up and out the sides as our electric mixer does. The slower RPMs also keep the splatter form occurring, not always the case with our electric stand mixer. Surprisingly we were done mixing a cake mix much quicker than we ever would have anticipated.
The other thing we noticed is the Little Dutch Maid base although heavy to where it wont walk off the counter when cranking, is relative easy to handle to move and place on a shelf. Our large stand mixer and food processor are much heavier and harder to move from the back counter over to our work counter, in fact we just dont take the time to break them out to use unless we have a large batch to do. It is easier to just do it by hand or use a hand held electric mixer.
This doesnt say much for our $1000 investment to have two machines setting and taking up so much counter space that we hardly use except maybe during the Holidays. On the other hand we can see where the Little Dutch Maid Mixer is very convenient easy to clean and store on a pantry shelf.
The switch out between the mixing bowl and the food shredder is very simple and quick. It takes one hand to turn the spindle to locate the flat blade insert into the hub and the other hand to align the hub pins with the slots in the bottom of the attachment, then the attachment turns and locks into place.
Not having the electric interlock system on the food processor also makes it much easier to lock down without having to be precisely being in the notch for the machine to work.
The mixing bowl comes with two wire whisk and the whisk gear assembly. These snap in and out for easy cleaning and optional cookie paddles can be used in place of the whisk. The heavy duty dough hook also comes with the mixer bowl.
http://www.cottagecraftworks.com/images/little-dutch-maid-beater-assembled.jpg
The optional Bosh made food processor comes with three blades, two of them are reversible and provide thick and thin slices, and then a grater blade provides the option of fine or coarse processing of such things as cabbage slaw. The third blade allows French fires to be cut from a potato, although they will be short since the supply tube like all food processors only allows quarter sized potato wedges.
We were amazed at how evenly and prefect the vegetable slices came out. You could actually display them as a garnish. The slower RPM does a much nicer job in the slicing process than our electric processor which tends to mangle or chop our vegetable slices up.
We were impressed how the machine stayed in place on the counter, the only time we had to place a hand on the base was when we were in the final stages of our bread mix, even then we didnt have to apply pressure to hold it down as it wasnt as much about the base walking, but more to keep the base from pulling toward us when the crank was being pulled against the thick dough.
We were also impressed with how easy the machine cranked, the handle length seems to be portioned very well to provide the maximum leverage without become fatigued the arms or hands. Again the two speed system is very simple and easy to change the crank from high to load. This allows the cranking speed to stay the same so there is no reason to wear you out trying to crank faster for whipping.
Overall we were very pleased with the performance and are very proud to be able to offer such a high quality long lasting American made product. Even with the imported Bosh attachments this is something that every self sufficient off-grid or even a regular main stream person should consider purchasing. Even at the price Cottage Craft Works is close to $200 less than one of the other popular online retailers selling the Little Dutch Maid under its original name Troycraft Mixer
You can purchase The Little Dutch Maid Off-Grid Hand Crank Mixer at this link at Cottage Craft Works .com
I thought I was having trouble saving up for the KitchenAid...
I'll stick with my knives!
I would rather have a spoon and bowl now 
