Italian Cooking Made Easy

I actually think I must spend at least half of every day in the kitchen. I do 99.9% of the cooking in our house at the moment so it’s a good job I don’t mind being in the kitchen – though I draw the line when it comes to actually sleeping in there. I love making food from scratch and a lot of what I cook is influenced by what I learnt to cook from my Nan, Mum and from my time living in Italy. Domu got in touch and asked me if I’d be interested in trying one of their Von Shef Food Stand Mixers (you know, like the ones on GBBO!!) and so of course I had to say yes annnnnnddd I got it in PINK too as of course all our kitchen accessories are the gorgeous baby pink and baby blue. When it arrived, I was so excited to test it and review it and thought I would tie in with The Great British Bake Off itself and follow one of the themes it did one week. It just so happens that this last week was Italian week so how could I possibly resist…

So as I said the brilliant people at Domu sent me this gorgeous Pink Food Stand Mixer (though it is available in lots of other colours too) and I may have made a little (okay huge) squeal of excitement when I unboxed it! It comes with three different mixer heads – whisking, beating and kneading so I swear it can literally do anything in the kitchen other than turn the oven on and shove it in for you!

It’s really easy to use as there is a little lever which when pushed raises the head of the mixer so you can get the mixing bowl in and out, change the mixer head and clean etc. It of course comes with a mixing bowl which holds 5.5L – that’s ALOT of cookie dough right?! It has several speed settings including a pulse action and you also know when it is switched on as the dial gently flashes a blue light from behind.

I was wondering how noisy it was going to be as I tend to do a lot of cooking when Alyssa is asleep (when she ever sleeps!!) so I tested it out on Nonna, who slept right through the noise when it was right outside her bedroom door! I’m not getting that close to Alyssa’s door (I’m not mad!!) but needless to say she couldn’t hear it from the kitchen which was perfect.

I decided to test it out by making my authentic Italian pizza dough recipe and giving everyone homemade pizzas for dinner which is always a favourite in our house! Here’s a little sneak peak at how I got on…

To watch the full video and demonstration visit my Youtube Channel.

For the full recipe read Mama’s Best Homemade Pizza!

What do you reckon – good enough to join next year’s batch of GBBO’s, right?! Hmmm perhaps not but you saw how amazingly well the dough turned out and I have to say it was one of my best one’s yet (so I was told) and I didn’t even need to do any of the mixing or kneading – outdone by a machine!

It’s safe to say I will be using the Von Shef Food stand mixer pretty much every day from now on as it saves me so much time and makes it much easier I have to say, to cook from scratch! They’re sturdy, have huge capacity and look like they’ll last a lifetime and not only that they’re pretty too. Why not have a go at being part of the GBBO yourself – you could try pastry, biscuits, cakes or like me have a go at good old pizza! If you do, then please let me know as I’d love to see your creations… and eat them too!

*This is a collaborative post.