Seems like a good ice cream maker...
Hello ice cream lovers...
Made my first batch of ice cream today and it turned out great. Hard to believe ice cream could be too rich, but I will be reducing the heavy whipping cream in the next batch. The machine worked flawlessly, so I'm pleased with the mechanics. It does make a bit of noise, but not excessive. In independent testing this machine was quieter than most of the others tested.
A word of caution is justified after I finished making my first batch. If you are making ice cream and not gelato or sorbet, which is my only experience to this point, do not fill the tub to the top mixer blade as instructed. That is intended to be a MAX fill point. Trust me on this point. Ice cream expands pretty dramatically when churned and in this instance the ice cream completely fill the tub when it finished. Some of the ice cream got all over the underside of the clear plastic lid. Ok, no biggie, right? Right, but the ice cream also spilled over the tub lip a little and got into the groove that surrounds the top of the non-removable freezer section. That created a cleaning issue that I was not anticipating. It took a good 5 minutes using a damp paper towel to get all the residue out of that one little groove. I will be using a bit less ice cream mix in the future to stop this little issue of spillage. I'm thinking it's a good idea to only fill to 1/2 inch below the top paddle blade. I don't know if the heavy whipping cream created more expansion as the ice cream maker finished churning or if that amount of expansion is normal. I'd estimate the expansion was maybe 50%. So, keep that in mind. My advice is to simply experiment and err on the side of caution when filling the tub. But, more to the point and another word of caution, the instructions state if making sorbet to not put more than 1 qt (4 cups) of liquid into the tub. I'm going to heed that advice when making gelato, sorbet or sherbet. Can you tell I didn't like cleaning that freezer section groove?
Another small issue is removing the ice cream from the tub. Once you've removed the tub from the freezer section you've got to get the ice cream out of the tub and into a freezer safe, air tight container. Sounds like a no brainer, right? The instructions state to remove the paddle from the tub, but when I pulled up on the paddle it pulled most of the ice cream out with it. I'm still contemplating the best method for removing the paddle and all I can come up with is to just dump everything into a big bowl and then transfer that ice cream into a freezer container. If you're not careful there is the real potential for making a huge mess with this step. Be prepared or you might end up with a big blob of ice cream on your floor or countertop.
So, the bottom line is the machine does exactly what it's supposed to do and for that I am truly pleased. Any issues I had in this first batch of strawberry ice cream could be attributed to human error due to lack of experience and a recipe that created an ice cream that is simply too rich for my personal taste. Most would say that ice cream can't be too rich. I will be reducing the proportion of heavy cream to milk in the future to make a lighter ice cream. My next batch will have half the cream and more whole milk.
To make it less caloric (ex-fatty) I'm going to make my next batch with granulated Splenda instead of sugar. I think this is a substitution that will be seamless in terms of taste. (The instruction booklet states that using artificial sweeteners is ok.)
I do have one very minor complaint about the instruction booklet. The page references on page 7 are incorrect. The recipes do not start on page 3 and the sorbet recipes are not on page 17. No big deal, but Cuisinart should edit their booklet. (Special Note: As a writer I'm critical of how my native language is used. It's a personal aggravation in my life when I see supposed professionals using incorrect pronouns and tenses of verbs. Don't like editing mistakes, either.)
I'll be updating this review in the future to offer some additional observations. But, so far, so good. I recommend the Cuisinart ICE-100.
Verified purchase: YesCondition: New