If there is one thing most cooks covet, it’s a shiny new KitchenAid; they are an iconic piece of beautifully designed kit.  Sadly, little Brick Lane Kitchen is too small to accommodate one and my bank balance too low to purchase one.

So, when I got the opportunity (thanks to Love Pop Ups London and the London KitchenAid experience store) to get my hands on one of these beauties, I immediately said yes.  The store, located on Wigmore Street, offers a number of cookery courses, from plant based recipes, which we tried our hands at, to chocolate making, modern bakery and even pizza and pasta.  It’s a lovely space where you will find yourself surrounded by shining, new appliance everywhere you look. With space for 12, it means there is lots of time to ask questions and get hands on help on the day.

Aprons on, Lisa, our teacher for the day, took us through the recipes we would be making.

To start with, she showed us how to make the Brownies, using lots of interesting ingredients to keep them moist, chocolatey and vegan.  The recipe called for black beans and bananas, although she actually forgot to add the bananas which we didn’t realise until much later when they came out of the oven.  Which just goes to show even the professionals make mistakes. While she whizzed everything up in the KitchenAid food processor, we had a taste of the ones she had made in the morning before we arrived.  They were extremely squidgy, a little bit like a slightly undercooked brownie, very chocolatey. On top there was a tahini, salted caramel drizzle, adding some sesame flavour.

The first recipe we made ourselves was fresh tagliatelle. After checking that there were no vegans in the class, Lisa showed us how to make egg based pasta.  Making the dough in the KitchenAid mixer was so easy and so much faster than doing it by hand, it took just minutes. I was, slowly, falling in love with my beautiful, copper KitchenAid.

After a little kneading, we wrapped the dough in clingfilm and pop it in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

While our pasta was chilling, we gathered  round the main workstation and Lisa explained how she had made the Kale pesto and then showed us how to make red pepper pesto that would later be served on our pasta

Next, we headed back to our own stations, collecting our pasta from the fridge as we went.  We added the pasta attachment to our stand mixers, cut the pasta dough into three and switched on the mixer.  It’s important to remember to start on the widest setting, No.1 and work down. On the first three run throughs, we folded the dough over on itself and put it back through the attachment. Then after a few times on each stage we increased the setting. I really enjoyed this, finding it quite therapeutic and almost meditative as I get into a rhythm. Once it was thin enough, we changed the attachment so we could make tagliatelle before the pasta dried out.  And so we went back and forward rolling and cutting until we had used all our dough. I got adventurous and tried my hand at adding basil leaves which made very pretty pasta.

Some of the pasta was hung for cooking and the rest I rolled liberally in semolina to stop it sticking as I made nests to take home.

Before we could have our pasta, we needed to make our starters.  Lisa showed us how to make sweet potato flatbreads which were very simple to make, with just four ingredients.

Lisa also had some pre-made pizza dough which we shaped and placed on a baking tray, along with our own sweet potato ones.  These didn’t take long to cook and while they did, we made smashed avocado. I loved mine with a decent pinch of salt, a big squeeze of lemon and some chilli.

Finally, it was time to eat our spoils.  The pizza style flatbread was much lighter and fluffier than the sweet potato. I would definitely give the sweet potato ones a try again but I would play about with the recipe, to see if it could be made a bit lighter.  We topped both with the avo and some of the Kale pesto which I really loved.

This was followed by a very generous portion of our tagliatelle with red pepper pesto.  Mandy, who runs the KitchenAid Experience store, decided this would be even better with a glass of prosecco.

We boxed up our uncooked pasta, uneaten flat breads and some brownies to take home, finishing up an hour before the advertised time.

Before leaving, we were given a goodie bag with all the recipes, a holder for the recipes cards and a spatula in classic KitchenAid red.

This was a really fun day and I liked the small class size which meant you had plenty of time to ask questions and get help if you needed it.  I would like to have had a chance to do a bit more cooking, especially as time would have allowed for this. At £95, it’s in line, price wise, with most cookery classes in London that I’ve tried. It’s also a great way to get hands on with an iconic piece of kit before deciding to buy.

I was a guest of the KitchenAid Experience store but all views are my own.

You can book your own KitchenAid experience here.