Cuisinart--easy as ice cream!

Author's Rating:

Pros: A breeze to use, easy to create new recipes or copy store-bought, great taste!

Cons: Quite loud, long wait between batches.

The Bottom Line: 
Definitely recommend to anyone looking to make incredibly tasty ice creams, sorbets, and smoothies!

Author's Review
We’re a fairly political family.  We make some of our food buying decisions based upon the political or humanitarian actions of the company making that food.  As a result, last spring found us swearing off a rather broad swath of ice cream companies.  Our 12 year old, who is a coffee-flavored ice cream fiend, was given the choice to follow or no, depending upon his conscience.  He chose to swear off those companies, which left him bereft of coffee-flavored ice creams.  We were proud of him, but it did leave him in a bit of a bind.

Until Christmas.  Though I feared it would become a dusty addition to the pantry of forgotten appliances, I took a chance and bought our boy a Cuisinart 1.5 quart ice cream, frozen yogurt, sherbet, and sorbet maker.  I thought he might roll his eyes.  I thought he might think it was the lamest gift ever.  What I didn’t count on is it being the hit of the season—not just for him, but for all of us!

The Cuisinart ice cream maker is, above everything else, easy to use.  I feared some complicated monster, but it’s nothing like that.  The machine, which is approximately 10x10x15, comes with a liquid-filled “chilling chamber,” which, when frozen (some claim freezing occurs in as little as 8 hours—our experience says more like 24), provides the cold necessary to freeze the ingredients.  A sturdy plastic paddle rotates, mixing the ingredients and introducing a bit of air.  The whole process takes about 30  LOUD minutes, and the result, if you follow directions, is a good, stiff (but not hard), very rich ice cream. 

And what about that ice cream, huh?  Well, we’ve wandered far afield from the included recipe book, but have found that, so long as we use the basic recipe as our base, things turn out great.  Last night?  Ovaltine ice cream with toffee chips.  Holy cow, was that good!  Hubby has made pineapple-habanero sorbet.  We’ve had strawberry ice cream, peach frozen yogurt, mocha ice cream (with decaff coffee and dark chocolate chunks), egg nog smoothies, colada smoothies, and, of course, a LOT of coffee flavored ice cream.  Yes, the boy is very pleased!

Clean up of the unit (which comes in red or white) is very easy—just rinse out the chilling chamber (be careful—your sponge might freeze to the interior), put it in a large Ziploc-like bag, and put it back in the freezer.  Rinse the lid and paddle, and you’re done!  If you’re not looking to eat the whole batch right away, I recommend covered Rubbermaid or Tupperware containers to freeze it up right.

The Cuisinart 1.5 quart ice cream maker has turned out to be the most surprisingly wonderful kitchen contraption we own.  It has soared above expectations, and I recommend it to anyone who likes ice cream!

Lean n Mean