KitchenAid’s 4 Best Attachments for 2026

Top choice

You can make several servings of shaved ice in less than 30 seconds with this attachment. It’s a bit of a splurge but great if you’re looking for fun, a light treat for the kids or if you just like to entertain.

If you’ve longed for a Snoopy Sno-cone Machine as a kid (or if you’ve been disheartened by the hard, laborious reality of using that device), the KitchenAid Shave Ice Attachment may finally make your snow cone dreams come true. Makes a nice shaved ice lightning, and you can use it to make a quick granita with frozen juice or coffee.

Using the attachment, freeze 6 ounces of any liquid in each of the four molds included. After choosing a coarse or fine blade, take the ice puck out of its shell, put it in the machine, and crank your mixer to high. In less than 30 seconds, you’ll have a mound of shaved ice big enough to serve one or two people – about two cups total.

A fine blade is the one we would choose most of the time. Shave the snow into something soft with little wrinkle. The result is not as soft and ice-like as, say, Japanese kakigori, but it is still delicious to eat and soaks up the syrup well. A hard blade produces something too small to be pleasant to eat. It would be great in a cocktail that calls for crushed ice or as a bed of raw oysters.

Without ice, we tried to shave a frozen mango drink with cold iced coffee, and the results were good. The sugar made the frozen liquid softer than ice, so it was easier to shave, easier.

If you are not satisfied with the texture of the ice, we found that you can adjust the angle of the blade with the help of a screwdriver. The adjustments you can make are very small, but they make a difference, and can allow you to shave a finer or coarser texture. Just be warned that shaving ice finer can slow down the process.

This attachment is for entertainment only. But as fun gadgets go, this one produces the highest level of fun with the lowest level of effort. Especially if you freeze the juice and skip the step of making or getting the syrups, you can make a frozen treat in less time than it takes to open a popsicle.

Kids will no doubt love this thing and can go around trying to freeze and shave different drinks. But it might make for a great dinner party trick: Impress your guests with bowls of shaved ice and loads of toppings while you save yourself the stress of baking a cake.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

Many people are surprised or disappointed to find that this attachment does not work with regular ice cubes. You must use the special ice mold included. But using the blade on the smooth, flat surface of the puck of ice is what allows this attachment to shave off thin, even piles of ice. It would be difficult to achieve the same results from a pile of ice cubes.

You are limited in the number of ice molds that come with the machine (four), but you have a few ways around this. The most economical, but time-consuming, method is to remove the ice from the mold as soon as it is frozen and store it in a zip-top bag. You can refill the mold, and over time create a batch of ice pucks that are perfect for shaving.

KitchenAid also sells a set of four molds separately for $25, so you can add your own ingredients (or replace the mold if it cracks).

We don’t know how well the blades will hold up over time or how quickly they will fade. But if you need to replace them, KitchenAid sells those separately, too. And we will continue to use this attachment to see how it stands.

What’s different

We haven’t tested individual shaved ice machines, including the popular Hawaiian Shaved Ice S900A, so we can’t say how it compares to the KitchenAid Shave Ice Attachment in terms of speed or efficiency.

The Hawaiian Shaved Ice machine has one potential advantage over the attachment: You push the ice puck down the spinning blade (the attachment uses a spring-loaded mechanism), so you can adjust the amount of pressure applied to achieve a wide range of ice textures.

And it has an obvious disadvantage: It takes up more space.

And we don’t know much about the motor in the Hawaii machine, but we can guess that the KitchenAid attachment is useful there as well, since the stand mixer motor is powerful enough to mix thick cookie dough or knead bread and is durable enough to last for decades.