Every December the same question comes up: do I need a stand mixer for all this baking, or will a hand mixer cope? For most home bakers, honestly, a decent hand mixer covers it. The Kenwood QuickMix (HMP30) is the one I’d look at first, because it’s simple, it’s small enough to live in a drawer, and it does the jobs Christmas baking actually asks of it.

You get a 450W motor, five speeds plus turbo, and two pairs of stainless steel attachments: beaters and dough hooks. They click out for washing. That’s genuinely it, and I’d count that as a plus. No balloon whisk or stick blender attachment to lose at the back of a cupboard.

So, can it cope with December?

Christmas cake and creaming butter and sugar. This is where a hand mixer earns its keep. Creaming by hand with a wooden spoon is miserable, and 450W on a middle speed gets butter and sugar pale and fluffy in a few minutes. Once the fruit goes in, switch to a spoon. Nobody should be beating 1kg of soaked fruit with an electric mixer.

Meringues and pavlova. Start slow, then work up to the top speed and the turbo. It’ll get there. A stand mixer is nicer here only because you can walk away while it whisks, but a hand mixer gives you better control over when to stop.

Mince pie pastry. Don’t use the mixer for this at all. Rubbing in by hand or with a food processor keeps the pastry short. Use the QuickMix for the frangipane if you’re doing a frangipane mince pie.

Bread dough with the hooks. Fine for a small loaf or a batch of soft rolls. For a big, stiff dough you’re better off kneading by hand, because hand mixer dough hooks aren’t designed for heavy loads and you’ll be holding it for a long time.

When would a stand mixer be the better buy?

If you bake most weekends, make big batches, or do a lot of bread, a stand mixer starts to make sense. We’ve got a separate piece on whether a stand mixer is worth the counter space. If you bake in bursts (a cake here, a tray of cupcakes there, then a flurry in December), a hand mixer like this is the more sensible buy. It costs far less and doesn’t take over your worktop.

A word of advice: use a deep bowl and always start on speed 1. Going straight to turbo with icing sugar in a shallow bowl is how a kitchen ends up looking like a snow globe. And rinse the beaters the moment you’re done, because dried cake batter sets like cement.

It’s not the fanciest mixer on Amazon and it doesn’t pretend to be. It’s a dependable, no-fuss tool that’ll get you through Christmas and the birthday cakes in between.