Is there a reason that a new 610 (big) series kitchenaid would need to be used differently that one of the regular classic kitchenaid mixers?

How would that be the machines fault? She didn’t whip it enough. What is she, just reading the direction word for word and timing how long she needs to whip it? You can’t do that. You should be able to look at and tell if the peaks are stiff enough.

If the bowl is bigger and you are only whipping a little bit of product, I guess it possible that it not whipping the same amount at the same time. Or maybe she whipping more since she has the bigger bowl and that why it needs more time.

It’s louder because it has a bigger motor.

I’m inclined to agree that it’s not a mixer issue. It would be helpful to know this: does the meringue itself, before adding the butter, look different in this mixer than in the old one? Different consistensy? Or is it only after adding the butter that it seems to go soupy?

How humid was it? Rain and humidity can greatly influence meringue, as well as the speed of the beater. If the butter is overbeaten, it will liquify. Also, the starting temp of the ingredients and bowl.

1. She knows what she’s doing. She’s made the same meringue many times before.

2. The meringue was weird looking even before the butter was added.

2. It was very hot the day she made it, so we thought that was it. We immediately put it in the fridge overnight, hoping that would help it stiffen, but it didn’t. The next day it was a more normal temperature and humidity so she tried again, double checking the recipe (the same one she has always used), and the results were the same. So we then made a third batch in the old mixer, and it came out fine.

My Gramma made peach meringue pie all her life (in the south). She always checked the weather first. If it was too humid or too hot or raining out, she didn’t even try, nor do I. Putting it in the fridge will only add more humidity, thus make it fail. Overbeating will also warm the ingredients and cause failure.

All meringues aren’t alike. Swiss meringue is the least finicky of the three main types and isn’t sensitive to heat or humidity, but here’s a hypothesis: it’s possible to overbeat the meringue during the cooling cycle, which makes it collapse into a runny paste. If that’s what she’s observing, the new mixer may be a bit too agressive in its beating action during that part of the operation. Give it high speed after heating the whites and sugar until it reaches maximum volume, but then reduce the speed to a bare minimum for the cool-down phase. If she’s already doing that, try just turning the mixer on (at low speed) for a few seconds every couple of minutes during the cool-down.

Because the meringue thickens drastically as it cools, overmixing will break up the air cell structure, which brings on the collapse. Perhaps the old machine was easier on the meringue through this phase.

Again, just a hypothesis.

I found this on the C&H sugar site dealing with meringues. It has a lot of useful information:

http://www.chsugar.com/Consumer/beyond_meringue.html

One thing that I noticed that they mentioned was the freshness of the eggs. I remember seeing a local news show that covered the handling of eggs in markets and sometimes they are even switched, older ones in a new carton. It could have been that the first eggs were much fresher than the later eggs that finally worked. Just a thought.

Another thing that the article mentioned was a clean metal bowl. Were the eggs cracked directly into the bowl or into another bowl that might have had some sort of residual in it?

You could also call Kitchenaid’s consumer hotline and ask if they have any suggestions.

Sometimes things just go crazy, even for people that do it all of the time. My mom was an expert at Pecan Pie and it came out perfectly her entire life, until once when she made it and baked it, all of the ingredients reversed. The nuts sank to the bottom and the molasses part rose to the top. It tasted the same, but we never did figure that one out.

I do agree with it being louder than a classic. I have to plug my ears sometimes. What gives?