It's not often I review kitchen appliances, the reason being that I would prefer someone else do the cooking. However Alex had decided to do a dinner party and in true Alex form this dinner party wasn't for six or even twelve people but near on twenty! I was left in charge of the dessert. Recipe, ingredients and one Kenwood kMIX KMX 54. Thank god for the latter! With its solid frame, huge mixing bowl and large whisk attachment it meant that my job was done in just 20 minutes. Afterwards it was really quick to clean and put away – or would have been had Alex, CB and myself not spent almost twice that time cleaning it out with fingers!

The kMix is pretty impressive from the moment you pull it out of the box. Beautiful to look at, it's also wonderfully solid giving a sense of stability if you wanted to mix up a heavy bread dough or whip a cake mix at higher speed. The KMX54 isn't about to travel across the kitchen surface. The mixing bowl is 4.6 litres and comes with a plastic splashguard to avoid spraying food around the room. Once the splashguard is on you can still add more ingredients to the mix by the hinged opening on the side. The kMix comes with 3 attachments: a large whisk, a beater and a third one that confused me. Luckily a quick flick through the instructions taught me that it was a dough hook for yeast mixtures, best used at minimum speeds. The kMix also comes with a plastic spatula which came in handy for my dessert, beyond the use of the mixer.

The mixer comes with 6 speeds from a very slow 'soft start' to very quick. It also comes with a 'fold' function which I used to finish off my dessert. As well as the speed switch, the kMix also has an electronic speed sensor so it can maintain its speed regardless of what it is you are mixing. When done, the KMX54 is easily pulled apart and is dishwasher safe, post Alex and CB "I'll just lick that clean for you".

I realise that nowhere in this review have I mentioned which dessert it was that we devoured that night. For all the foodies out there it was Eton Mess, with enough double cream, strawberries and meringues for 20 people. It was actually fun to make, though I doubt I would have had such fond memories had I needed to have whipped it all up by hand. To the relief of my feeble arms I am a big fan of the KMX54.

An Eton Mess aficionado unbeknown to us was on the guest list and offered the ultimate accolade as she left – it was the best Eton Mess she had ever had!

Price in the region of £350 . See here for the technical details