Review: Kenwood Titanium Chef Patissier XL

A mixer is not just a mixer. There’s a big difference in quality, and the best ones can be passed on to your grandchildren. The Kenwood Titanium Chef Patissier XL is a step below the Kenwood Cooking Chef XL, which we recently tested. In short, the Patissier doesn’t get as hot and therefore can’t be used to cook food. It can still melt, warm and scale and is therefore a machine aimed at baking.

You get top-shelf quality. The whisk and dough hook are not made of aluminium, but stainless steel. Everything is heavy in the best way and should last well into the next century. You have the option to attach equipment on the top and front of the machine. Kenwood has developed more than 25 machines that can be connected to the Patissier’s motor, including blenders, meat mincers and pasta makers.

The Patissier has induction heating and scales built in. You also get a small screen included. On it, you can change settings, heat, speed and timer. There are a few built-in recipes, but unlike the Cooking Chef XL, you can’t use the Kenwood app with the machine.

The smart features may seem limited compared to the larger model. But the features are well-chosen. Being able to scale continuously is a handy upgrade that saves time and washing up. So is the heating, which allows you to melt butter or chocolate directly in the bowl. Yeast dough often requires a warm place to rise. Now you can just leave it in the bowl.

Screen and interaction

The screen is very small, but together with a single rotary wheel, it controls the entire machine. It’s a touchscreen, so if you’re visually impaired or have poor fine motor skills, it will be an annoying user experience. The control system is simple. The screen has three main menus. One for the inbuilt recipes, one for the scale and one to control heat, speed and timer.

The built-in recipes act more as an introduction to the machine than a guide to making something delicious. You don’t get measurements or ingredients listed, just the correct settings (according to Kenwood) for whipping egg whites, rising bread or pizza dough, among other things. Since you can’t connect the machine to the Kenwood app, it’s also not possible to add more recipes to the machine. A bit of a shame.

The rotary dial works well, so once you’ve selected something you want to change in the menu, the interaction with the machine is very pleasant. Apart from the screen, this is a mixer as most people know them. You can lift the top part of the mechanism to make it easier to get the bowls in and out. At the front and top, you’ll find magnetic covers that shield the accessory connections.

Cooking with Patissier

The Patissier is more practical than intelligent. Its dull touchscreen and lack of connectivity means it doesn’t do all the thinking for you. In exchange, it does all the manual labour for you. Like other Kenwoods, it’s a true workhorse.

The dough hook in particular saves you a lot of manual labour. Such a hook comes in handy, especially when working with wet doughs that can be difficult to knead by hand. It also made a solid pasta dough, which we’re usually too lazy to do. Flour and eggs in the bowl and after 10 minutes you have a fully kneaded dough that is ready to roll out. Most people own a pan and a digital scale, so integrating these items is mostly about saving on washing up. No more melting butter in a cup in the microwave. We wish the Patissier was hot enough to brown the butter too, but alas.

The Patissier quickly transformed cinnamon roll dough from a sticky mass to a pliable dough. And then it could conveniently rest in the bowl with the heat on the lowest setting until it had tripled in size.

The 1,400 watt motor is wonderful and has enough torque to knead a hard pasta dough at the lowest speed without stalling or complaining. It’s the kind of thing you want from a machine that should survive for decades.

Whether the built-in weight and heat is worth the money compared to cheaper and equally robust mixers is up to the individual. We enjoyed having less dish washing, but there is money to be saved by opting for a machine without one. We would therefore be tempted by Kenwood’s other machines, where instead of scale and heat, you get more extras included in the price. On the other hand, the machine is meant to last for many years, so spending a little extra on luxury suddenly makes a lot of sense.

Conclusion

The Kenwood Titanium Chef Patissier XL is a worthy little brother to the larger Cooking Chef XL. If you use the machine exclusively for baking, there’s no need to spend money on more features than you get with the Patissier. It is first and foremost a robust kitchen machine and secondly a smart product. Exactly as it should be. You could easily wish for more connectivity options to make it more future-proof and use the Kenwood app.

Choose the Patissier if you hate washing up and don’t want to dig out a bowl and pan when you’re baking. It does everything you ask it to do, and if you want more, Kenwood also sells machines that can do it.