I just got my mixer a few weeks ago for Christmas. I have made cookies twice. My problem is that the bottom of the bowl doesn't get scraped. The first time, I ended up putting more flour in the dough when I got down to the bottom (It was basically the butter, sugar, egg mixture). This last time, I made sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl frequently, although this is NOT ok with me, this should not be needed!! I still ended up with about 1 batch that needed extra flour. I also tried making brownies from a mix, and ended up with a layer of dry mix at the bottom. What do I do?

You can adjust the mixer bowl up and down slightly. If you lower your bowl and look at the back you will see a little screw, it looks like a flat head screw and it is on the "neck" of the mixer.
You can raise and lower the bowl by adjusting this cam screw. You can tell that your bowl is adjust correctly by attaching the flat beater and put a dime in the bottom of the bowl, the beater should just barely touch the dime and move it around the bottom of the bowl.

The beater will not scrape the sides of the bowl, if you are wanting the sides of the bowl scraped I would recommend the Flex Edge Beater made by KitchenAid which is basically a flat beater with a rubberized edge which will scrape the side of the bowl as it rotates.

Here is a link to the flex edge beater on our website: http://www.mendingshed.com/kfe6l.html
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thank you,
ColleenCustomer ServiceMendingShed.com800-339-9297

Adjust the head height, tilt the head back and look into the hinge area from the front over the top of the bowl. Undo that slottedscrew you can see in the middle of the hinge a quarter turn at a time until it stops scraping.

Attach the Flat Beater to the Beater Shaft, and raise the bowl.
If the beater touches the bottom of the bowl then inspect the
Agitator shaft : the retaining ring should be leveled with the
surface of the Planetary. If not, then of course the bottom of
the beater will start scraping the bowl. You can use a rubber
mallet to tap the shaft back in.

There's a video on Youtube that will help: ">

Hi, Put your mixers head in upright position and adjust the screw between the head and the stand. This will rise the head (one rotation is about 1 mm) and the attachement will not scrape the bowl.

I would check the bottom of the beater blades to see if they are out of shape.,or is the base of the mixer raised somehow to cause this problem

One thing many KitchenAid mixer owners complain about is that it's difficult to scrape the bowl while the mixer is running. Because the beater rotates around the inside of the bowl, and because the beater doesn't actually touch the bowl, you have to stop the mixer frequently to scrape the sides of the bowl to make sure all the ingredients are well incorporated.

Two companies have come up with fixes for that problem -- the BeaterBlade+ and the SideSwipe.

They are available for most KA mixers. Cook's Magazine tested both in January 2009 and liked the SideSwipe a tad more than the BeaterBlade because they thought it performed a little better on a particularly heavy cookie dough, but one reviewer on another forum commented that dough tends to bunch up on the SideSwipe's inner parts.

In any case, I have the BeaterBlade+, mainly because it was available from Amazon for $30, no tax, free shipping, and I didn't feel like driving around to find the other.

Both are made of very strong plastic and have silicone scrapers on the edges of the blades. The scrapers do touch the bowl and thus provide a constant scraping of the ingredients, assuring that everything gets mixed in. I've found that I rarely have to stop the mixer, except to make sure that the ingredients that cling to the beater itself are mixed in.

This sounds like an issue of beater to bowl adjustment, which can come out of alignment naturally over time and with use of the machine.

If the flat beater is striking the bottom of your bowl, this may cause the locking mechanism to loosen and may cause the mixing head to "bounce" during use.

Your Use and Care Guide will cover the "beater to bowl adjustment," which you can do at home in a few minutes with a flathead screwdriver.

i don't mean to be too basic, but have you used the slider at the mixer base that moves the bowl so the beater can be at the bowl edge or towards the middle? It works on ours, it's the black pad or button there at the front of the base, just push down and slide it. Maybe they made a cheaper model with no sliding base.

There is an adjustment screw and a system for setting it. You can find a video of it here (or just a ton of people who know all about these mixers). I just found it while trying to troubleshoot the same problem for my wifes mixer.

http://forum.kitchenaid.com/forums/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=196