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355 of 358 people found the following review helpful.
Great ice cream with little fuss
By John Stagaman
Like another reviewer, I was happy to see a compressor machine available for a reasonable price. I’d owned a littler machine with a bowl that was placed in the freezer, but the ice cream wasn’t as creamy as I wanted and the results varied dramatically from batch to batch.
Armed with a gift certificate (plus rather a bit more), I ordered this machine. For the fourth of July, I made 3 flavors for a party (vanilla, chocolate, & stawberry–I went with the basics), making the bases for each the night before. The next morning, I froze all three ice creams in less than two hours. With a compressor machine, it’s easy to make multiple batches one after the other. And the ice cream was a hit at the party, too.
Some tips:
1. The firstborn batch I made was a simple recipe from the instructions which contained no eggs. While it turned out OK, it couldn’t compare with custard-based ice creams that include egg yolks. The custard bases systematically result in smoother, creamier, and richer ice cream.
2. Try to make the ice cream base the night before you’ll be freezing it (especially custard bases). It allows the flavors to blend and ensures the base is cold. A cold base will freeze more quickly and is less likely to manufacture ice crystals.
3. When making chocolate ice cream, using quality chocolate rather than cocoa gives a richer flavor.
4. It’s much more comfortable to make ice cream when there’s no need to have lots of ice and rock salt or do not forget to pre-freeze bowl wich may or may not fit in the freezer.
5. It also may freeze sorbets and sherberts and make slushies for the kids. I suppose you could make frozen drinks with it, but I’ll stick to the blender for those.
I’m very happy with it so far. It seems well made, develops great ice cream, and has a more spectacular capacity than a heap of other compressor units. While I suppose to commonly make a half-batch at a time, the 1 1/2 quart capacity plus the capacity to speedily freeze multiple batches is great for those times when you need a large total of ice cream.
148 of 148 people found the following review helpful.
Easy setup, quick, no need to pre-freeze work bowl but loud
By D. Brennan
The only ice cream maker I employed prior to this was an italian gelato machine. That device required the work bowl to be frozen for various hours prior to making ice cream AND the use of alcohol to help in the transfer of cold from the compressor to the work bowl.
This machine from Cuisinart does away with the need for both. This is accomplished by finely devising the parts so that the work bowl fits VERY snugly in to the device. The result – much posing no difficulty setup with less mess.
A batch ordinarily takes 35-40 minutes, assuming you have permitted the mix to reach room temperature before adding it to the machine. Add 10 minutes if you are adding a warm mix.
You will still need to place the ice cream in your freezer for 20-30 minutes to get the right texture. That’s mutual with most home machines so don’t look at this as a fault of this machine.
Because you do not need to pre-freeze the bowl, you may make batch after batch of ice cream. We have made 5 successive batches (for a party) in beneath 5 hours without any problems.
One star is subtracted for the amount of noise this machine generates. We have taken to putting it in our bedroom while it does it is work. We were not competent to speak with other people at a normal volume when this machine it in the same room.
The recipes in the included recipe book are ok – not great. I would commend picking up a recipe book – perhaps Ben & Jerry’s – when you buy this machine.
149 of 157 humans found the following review helpful.
Pass on this one, very poor design
By Jane Palmer
Let me get started by saying I have always been a fan of Cuisinart. But they genuinely missed the ice cream boat on this one! I received this for Christmas this year, in spite of reading galore of the negative reviews here on Amazon. I assured myself that I would love this product, so read the review with this in mind. I veritably wanted to love this ice cream maker.
I make ice cream assorted times a month, using my tried and unfeigned Cuisinart Ice Cream maker that requires freezing of the insert. It has always worked perfectly, but I wanted to take it to the next level and make ice cream the mercantile way. I was hoping for a very smooth end product, and didn’t mind the noise.
I made one batch of ice cream (attempted really) in this machine, and realized without delay that this was not a well designed piece of equipment. The base is heavy and sturdy, and seemed well made. But the arm that drives the churn is plastic!! And there is no way to secure the churning device so that it stays in the bowl. Once the ice cream base begins to harden and the work of the churn blade increases, the plastic arm just can’t meet the demand, and when the arm jumps up, the churn stops going. So now here we are, the refrigerator unit is freezing away, but no churning! Almost immediately, the ice cream at the perimeter of the bowl freezes so hard that it can’t be churned, leaving the middle of the bowl a soupy mess. And that folks, is all she wrote!
I tried following the counsel of others who had this same problem. A heavy book, a 5 pound hand weight, even me just standing there keeping down the arm (can you say boring!!) didn’t help. The churning blade always stopped.
So do yourself a favor. Stick with the extremely pleasing and elegantly simple design of the freezer bowl Cuisinart ice cream maker. Or plan on spending a lot of cash on a professional ice cream machine. This half hearted undertake by Cuisinart to meet me half way among simple and crazy pricey just left me cold. Oh, not my ice cream, just me!!!
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