KitchenAid 5KFE5T Flex Edge Beater (Optional Accessory for KitchenAid Stand Mixers), White

Pros -- Has made cake making so much easier, I'm making more cakes.Cons -- Has made cake making so much easier, I'm now looking at dieting options.

I had a BeaterBlade brand scraper beater for many years which I absolutely loved- the BeaterBlade scraped the bowl wonderfully well. After many years of use, the BeaterBlade (being made of plastic) broke and I was unable to get a new one at the time, so I purchased this KitchenAir Flex Edge beater instead, hoping it would work just as well as after all it is the official KitchenAid brand. However, the KitchenAid Flex Edge beater was very disappointing- despite being much sturdier than the BeaterBlade, it does a bad job of scraping the bowl, leaving lots of batter/dough/etc behind, and even more annoyingly it moves a little of the batter upwards so you end up with a rim of batter/dough around the top edge of the bowl too high for the beater to scrape.I still have to stop the machine regularly and scrape the bowl by hand, so that sort of defeats the point of using a scraper blade.I would return the beater except I don't want to go to the post office during the pandemic, so I suppose I will need to keep it. However, it doesn't really serve its purpose very well and I will be buying another BeaterBlade brand scraper blade to use instead.

This should be supplied with the machine. The equivalent one without the rubber strip is useless. I had to keep scraping the bowl with a spatula. This one is much more effective although you do still need to use the spatula to scrape the bottom. Quite expensive but seems good quality. Solidly made.

I'd read some of the reviews regarding it smearing butter along and up the sides of the bowl which worried me. But bought it anyway because I saw the beater's flex edge could be used as a spatula to empty the contents of the mixing bowl. It arrived in an official Kitchenaid box with thickish booklet of instructions in English and different languages, so I think it's legit. I tested the beater with an empty bowl and noticed that it made a "knocking sound" even though it was installed properly. The original beater that came with mixer doesn't make that knocking sound. I eventually used it to mix cheesecake batter, and it did a good job. As there was no knocking when there was batter in the mixing bowl, I can only assume the knocking sound was due to the flex edge hitting the sides of the empty mixing bowl. Finally, it's no replacement for a good spatula when it comes to emptying the bowl unless you want batter all over your fingers. So overall my impression is mixed.

I threw out the balance on my machine using a knock off Nigel and trying to save a tenner, so when I put my original and genuine paddle back on the machine it knocked, bumped and chipped off the paint on the base of it, meaning I now can’t use it for fear of getting paint chips in my batter, so saving that tenner has cost me a new paddle- moral of the story don’t fall for the Nigels.Though why kitchenaid have painted the paddle in the first place is a mystery, a simple aluminium one with no coating would be much better, so only four stars because of that.The paddle works smoothly, it doesn’t get all the batter off the sides ( particularly if you are making something like butter icing) but it is better than the paddle with no rubber spatula at doing this.