I've been doing more baking than usual, so this problem keeps bugging me: how do I effectively scrape the butter/sugar mixture or half-beaten cream cheese or whatever it is off of the paddle beater, so I don't end up with lumps later on in the process?
Lots of recipes call for scraping the bowl, but that's easy: it's a smooth curved surface, so any half-decent rubber scraper will do the job. A paddle attachment, on the other hand, has Nooks. And Crannies. And oddly-angled almost-but-not-quite-curved-but-certainly-not-flat surfaces. And did I mention the Nooks and Crannies?
What do people do? Struggle through with messy rubber scrapers and even messier hands? Don't bother scraping the beater, and end up with lumpy cheesecake or unmixed cookie dough? Am I missing some great secret of cookie bakers? Are there beaters that are easier to scrape than my Kitchen Aid flex-edge?
(Don't even get me started on the whisk attachment. Especially when the volume of meringue goes higher than the neck of the whisk.)
Best Answer
Use a rubber spatula to scrape the mixture off one side of the paddle. (For a head lift mixer, do this on the "uphill" side.) Then use the spatula diagonally in the holes, pushing the remaining mixture through the holes onto the unscraped side and off the paddle. The idea is for the mixture to fall out/off in clumps.