Makes Great Sorbet and Ice Cream - If your freezer is cold enough

Author's Rating:

Pros: Produces a great product Flavors limited only by your imagination

Cons: You need to freeze the sleeve to below zero F

The Bottom Line: 
Fantastic gadget to make tasty home made Ice Cream, Gelato and Sorbet.

Author's Review
As much as we love Ice Cream and Gelato - It has way too much fat for our diet. So, we like to make our own - reducing or eliminating the fat (yes, that makes it a Sorbet).

We also like to make our own flavors, Ever had Zinfandel or Tamarind Sorbet? YUM!

We also make the more traditional Peach and Lemon Lime Sorbets using fresh fruit from the trees our garden.

This machine does a fantastic job of turning your own recipes and ingredients into wonderfully tasting (and potentially unique) frozen treats.

We bought this machine on the recommendation of a friend and found it to be an inexpensive way to make great frozen desserts! It's also inexpensive and stores in a very small space - a plus since we live on a boat for part of the year.

However, we found that the typically boat or RV fridge/freezer doesn't get cold enough to freeze the sleeve! As a result, the frozen treat never sets up.

We never had a problem using our standard home fridge/freezer. However, if your freezer does not get below 0 degrees Fahrenheit you may have this problem.

It's really easy to setup and use this Ice Cream Maker!

The machine has a motorized base, a sleeve that you put in your freezer to supply the cold to make the ice cream, the dasher (that is the part that stays still, mixing the ice cream and scraping it off the slides of the rotating sleeve)and a clear plastic cover.

To make a frozen treat, you:

1) Put the sleeve in the freezer,
2) Make your ice cream/Gelato/Sorbet mix
3) Chill your mix thoroughly in the fridge (This step is very important for the best results)
4) Take the sleeve out of the freezer and assemble the unit
5) Start up the motor and make sure the sleeve freely rotates and the dasher doesn't (don't try pouring in your mix until the motor is running)
6) Take your mix from the fridge and pour into the ice cream maker
7) In about 20 minutes the maker will sound like it's working harder and may slow down. At this point your frozen treat is done!

If you like soft serve, you can enjoy immediately or you can remove your end product to other containers (which you should pre-chill in the freezer - we use empty plastic 1 quart Yogurt containers that we recycle) and store in the freezer.

We found clean up to be no big deal - you only have to wash the dasher (after a good licking!) and the sleeve. We then pop the sleeve back in the freezer for next time.

All in all - this is a fantastic product.

We think the fact that it makes a small amount of end product (1.5 quarts) is a big plus and helps us not Pig Out and blow our diet.