I was gutted yesterday afternoon to take out my posh Dualit handheld mixer whilst making fairy cakes with my little boy to find that the eject button is stuck in and the mixer won't turn on past the first setting, and then not reliably. Everybody told me not to bother getting an expensive hand mixer, that a £5 one from Tesco would be just as good but I was seduced by it's red rubberiness and bought it anyway. It cost me £45 and though I have been happy with it and like the fact that I store the cord inside making it very tidy, there probably wasn't really anything else that made it particularly better than any other mixer.

Anyhoo, Amazon reckon they are going to give me a full refund as I have had it less than 6 months so I am in the market for a new one. I was wondering if I should get a Food processor like this Kenwood, with all their attachments surely there would then be nothing I couldn't do in the baking world? It's actually the pictures showing all the attachments that put me off this option though as everyone knows I would just end up using only 1 of them and the rest would sit cluttering up my cupboards.

After much discussion with friends and family I am yet again being advised by most to get my refund and buy a cheaper hand mixer. I am sure they are right but I am finding it hard to resist the lure of the stand mixers. In an ideal world (where I have huge amounts of money) I would almost certainly be nabbing myself a funky red kitchen-aid mixer for around £300. This American import is used by Nigella on her shows and is generally considered to be the creme de la creme of the mixer world.

Unfortunately it's not an ideal world. I have a reputation for buying kitchen gadgets that I swear I will use daily that after 6 months sit on the shelf getting dusty. Stand mixers are supposed to be one of those things that last forever however and the benefit of being able to leave my cake mixture beating for 10 minutes while I deal with whingy children is a strong pull for some kind of stand mixer. After much browsing and review reading I have zeroed in on this Kenwood Patissier. It's £133 on Amazon but if I'm not too fussy about colour then I can get it by shopping around for about £112 (www.electricshopping.com). The review are fabulous and it seems to be considered to be as good as a Kitchen-aid with a lighter price tag. At over £100 it's still a hefty investment and I am still undecided but it's definitely buried itself in the "I want" part of my head.