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1503 of 1569 people found the following review helpful.
I’m not unreasonable, but this sucks.
By Thinking Girl
I’m not unreasonable, but I’m apparently the only one who thought this ice cream ball was crummy. I purchased it for my three young children and I to make ice cream, and found it to be a pain. First, the capacity is only 2 cups, which is not a lot. Second, ice cubes from a general ice cube tray are too huge to fit into the opening for the ice and salt. You either have to have a crushed ice ice maker, buy comercial ice or spend 15 minutes crushing the ice with a meat tenderizer mallet, like I did. I hoped that 5 ice trays of ice would be sufficient ice, but you need at least twice that much to keep the ball filled for the time required.
The instructions for the ball say that after ten minutes of mixing, to stir the ice cream. Sounds easy, but after you pry the lid off (with a special wrench they include with the ball so the ice cream mix may splatter everywhere) you have less than a 3 inch diameter to stir ice cream which is liquid on the inside core and frozen solid on the metal wall of the chamber six or seven inches deep. But wait, don’t use anything metal to chip the rock hard stuff into the liqid stuff! I tried a silicon spatulta, a wooden spoon, and at long last took the silicone head off the initial spatula and scraped the sides with the wooden handle wedge. (My neighbor and I both tried making ice cream and stiring each 5 minutes instead, didn’t help to hard ice cream mixing very much.)
Of course, you get ice cream dripping down the sides, but the ball has little raised ornamental ledges that catch the drips and funnel them into tight angled crevices that you need to use a mashed up paper towel corner, or a sharp knife tip with a dishcloth stretched over it to get out so you don’t end up rolling sticky ice cream batter into what ever surface you are playing with the ball on. There are mini chocolate chips stuck in a heap of of those grooves I haven’t been capable to get out after multiple washings, as well.
If you get this far, the end result is not very creamy or very smooth. We tried rolling, shaking, tossing, in galore dissimilar combos and still couldn’t get smooth textured ice cream. The recipes enclosed that I tried tasted cheap and not like any ice cream I’d pay for twice. I tried my own recipes, but the disability to mix adequately through the little opening into the deep canister made for hard crystal type lumps.
Overall, it may be a fun novelty for children, but it is a pain in the rump to use. You may do the same thing for a lot less with the same 2 cup capacity with a gallon and quart ziplock bag and just squishing it. I wish we had put the thirty bucks towards a hand crank or electric freezer, instead.
335 of 371 people found the following review helpful.
Have a Ball!! (and make ice cream)
By L. Keller
I received the Ice Cream Ball (in Green) for Mother’s Day after I brought up it would be fun to have when I saw it on the Food Network. Even even though it does not make a huge amount of ice cream, it makes sufficient to satisfy one’s cravings without going to all the trouble of a normal ice cream maker. You put ice and rock salt in one end and the ice cream mix in the other. I made vanilla the original time. Then my family and I went outside and rolled the ball, tossed it short distances to one another (it is much too heavy with all the ice to throw far,) and in general shook the heck out of it. I did have to drain the melted ice once and refill with more ice and rock salt. After 20-25 minutes I opened the ice cream container and ice cream had been made. It was a little soupy in the middle, but I had to scrape the sides to get the solid percentage out. If I would have “played” with the ball a little more all of the mix would have been solid. This method of making home-made ice cream definately would not work for a big number of people or a b-day party. But it works to satisfy a craving for 1-3 people. I guess you could say that you burned sufficient calories making the ice cream, that you will have to not feel guilty eating it!!
226 of 249 people found the following review helpful.
neat idea, just doesn’t work well
By A. Newhouse
I got this for Christmas, and at last got around to using it this summer. It’s a great idea (one of the 2 stars), and on the box it looks very easy to just kick or toss around and make ice cream! However, it is HEAVY once it is loaded with ice, salt, and cream ingredients. If you tried to kick it, you’d break a toe. It’s rather a workout to toss around, which may be a good thing, so there’s the other star.
However, after a half hour of hard work, we ended up with a lot of soupy sweet cream in the middle of the container (softer than a milkshake) and galore rock-hard ice sort-of-cream around the edges. It was difficult to get the hard elements off the edges of the container, and even altho anything with that much fat and sugar has to taste good, the texture left a lot to be desired.
No stars for the actual ice cream share of this ice cream maker. Get a nerf ball rather if you want something to throw around, and buy a lot of “slow churned” ice cream that’s more salubrious and tastes much better.
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