Appliance Reviews

You'll be inspired to attempt great feats of cookery with this machine in your kitchen. Like having a Mercedes in your driveway, people will expect more from you than the average person.

After many, many years of using the old (50 years +) reliable Sunbeam, that my grandmother bought when my mother was young, I finally had the courage to break from tradition, and get a mixer that could handle a recipe that called for more than 3 cups of flour. This baby will take up to 12 cups of flour (or 8 cups of whole wheat flour), and never groan or squeal. Cake mixes whip up in nothing flat, and I've never been able to make merangue as quickly or as stiff as I can with my new Epicurean Mixer.

Here's a hint. Make sure to read the instruction manual, and pay careful attention to the part about adjusting the bowl height. A quarter turn of the little adjusting screw is all it takes. Also, and I found this out the hard way, the metal clip on the back of the bowl support has to snap securely into place, otherwise you'll never get the bowl adjusted properly.

Complaints? Well, the first one is that I waited so long to do something about buying a good mixer. The other complaint is that this monster doesn't fit under my kitchen cabinets without a little twisting and tilting. Once it's in your kitchen, you'll find a way to live with it, and then you'll wonder how you ever did without it.

Reconditioned Epicureans are a fabulous deal. The slight power difference (475 vs 525 watts) between the Epicurean and Professional shouldn't make a huge difference for most people - I know from experience the Epicurean is plenty powerful enough to handle full batches of bagel dough, which is about as heavy and stiff as bread dough gets.
My reconditioned Epicurean was in near-perfect condition. The metal band around the top has a slight wrinkle, but I have to really stare closely to notice it, and the bowl's exterior has some rub marks from being raised and lowered a few times. The machine performs very well, and I spent less on it than I would have on a new Artisan - a much smaller, less powerful, and less efficient (stupid stupid tilt-head!) machine, in my opinion.
Oh, and this may be superficial, but the Krinkle Gray is such a pretty pretty color and its matte finish doesn't attract finger prints and smudges the way some shinier appliances do.

You really can not go wrong in choosing a reconditioned manufactured product as these items receive one on one inspections by professionals at the factory.......much more dependable than "new items" coming of the assembly line as only one in so many are checked for quality there.

I have never had a bad experience with a refurbished small appliance that I have purchased, and have enjoyed very exceptable pricing which equals SAVINGS.

After burning up a mixer that was rated for bread dough I decided I really needed a heavy duty machine and I got it!!! As a gift from my husband for our 33rd anniversary/Mothers Day. I make our bread and need a machine that can handle the dough.
I also make cheese cakes and the Kitchen Aid mixer was absolutely wonderful. I was afraid that the ingriedients would not get mixed well without scraping the bowl sides , not so. It not only mixed everything throughly it did it quickly. This refurbished mixer arrived in excellent condition, one could not tell it is refurbished. I really feel I got an excellent deal, a super mixer at a super price. My husband was really pleased too when I phoned him at work to tell him how much I loved the Kitchen Aid Mixer

I have LOVED my Kitchen aid 5 Qt mixer. I have used mine heavily for over 20 years. I have made bread, cookies, sauces, ground meat in the grinder attachment (also whole grains), you name it, it can do it. I do not know what the life span of a Kitchen aid mixer is, but at this rate, it will a very long time before I will need to replace it (yes, with it would be a new 5 Qt Kitchen aid). It is well worth the money.

As to getting very hot to the touch while mixing bread doughs, I have experienced that it can get a bit warm, but not so hot I can't touch the top of the motor casing. It states in the owners manual that this is normal. I very seldom have made more than one batch of bread per day just because I don't want to overtax my mixer (although I am sure it could handle it if allowed to rest a couple of hours).

This my second KitchenAid mixer. When I stumbled into the great deal on Amazon.com for the larger sized mixer I gave my daughter my smaller KitchenAide K45. My K45 had logged more miles then the Starship Enterprise in my kitchen over 25 years! I am equally thrilled with the larger unit I purchased. Not only for Amazon's speedy service, but the factory recondition mixer looks BRAND NEW, and performs performs, PERFORMS! No cook should be without one of these tough little work horses!

Not anything spectacular, but a good reliable toaster oven. My [reconditioned] unit arrived with some scratches on the inner coating, but that hasn't affected performance. The beeping mentioned by other reviews is only a problem if you leave the oven on the "toast" setting - as long as you turn the dial back to "off" after toasting, no midnight beeping! I use my real oven for baking and roasting, but the TOB-30BCFR is great for toasting bread, reheating pastries, melting cheese - all the usual toaster oven functions. Oh, and I've never noticed the door sticking.

I own a lot of Cuisinart products (food processor, waffler, ice cream maker, toaster, coffee maker...you get the point) so I'm familiar with the exceptional quality. But I was not prepared for what arrived at my door yesterday.

First, I was amazed at how HEAVY this toaster oven was; 20lbs shipping weight. In addition, I expected to see some smudges and scratches considering that this is a refurbished piece of equipment. What I pulled out of the box could not be distinguished from new with the exception of a small scuff on the upper rear panel of the toaster. This is a BIG unit. When they say that you could cook a 5lb chicken in this oven, it's no exaggeration.

Finally - How does it work? First, I fired it up to cook some chicken nuggets and tater tots for the kids. 425 degrees came in less than 3 minutes! Not that these are gourmet items, but the nuggets and tater tots cooked perfectly to a nice golden brown in about 9 minutes instead of the requisite 13-15 in my large gas oven. And on a hot day (98 degrees yesterday) it'll be a real God-send.

Oh...I made some toast for the kids this morning and that works equally well. You simply cannot go wrong - especially at this price. I'm thinking about buying a few more and giving them out as Xmas gifts.

This is my first independently owned toaster oven ever, and I couldn't be happier. I live by myself, and rarely cook anything bigger than my fist. All those nights wasting power heating up a big oven, what was I thinking?

So far, I've only made toast, but the toast was stupendous. I mean it. This is a cool little oven. Simple, innocuous, and it beeps like a microwave and shuts off when the toast is done. It's the total package.

My 23-year old coffee maker finally died, so I purchased a Krups Automatic for about $50. The Krups made either burnt or weak coffee. After two weeks, I gave up and ordered this Cuisinart, knowing that it might not fill the bill. Wow, was I surprised! The coffee taste is great; the construction is excellent, and it performs as advertised. First, I ran plain water through it to see if it leaked or if it filled the mugs improperly. Both tests passed with flying colors. Then I ran a two mug test using ground Melitta coffee. Perfect! Then I ran a single mug test using Savarin medium grind. Perfect again. The 14oz. stainless steel mugs are well made and keep the coffee warm, not hot, for about two hours. (4 stars, not 5 because of this). I like the fact that the unit shuts itself off automatically after it brews the coffee. At $20, it's a steal.

I am used with this coffee maker for over an year now and it just broke. I can't think of buying any other coffee maker because of how convenient this one is.
- No pot to clean
- No transfer of coffee to other container hence preserving heat
- lets you make even one cup coffee
- takes less than 3 minutes to make 2-cup coffee
- easy cleaning

They could have made this a better coffee maker if they used standard starbucks size mugs to fit under instead of having to use only Cuisinart mugs. Well, I can't survive with any other coffee-maker, so, I am grabing my second one!

Because of its design, this coffeemaker isn't subject to the kind of clogging that plagues most one-cup coffeemakers. The arrangement of drip holes in the cone is downright ingenious -- no buttons to push or levers to press. And it turns itself off when it's finished. I think it's terrific.