My birthday’s coming up, and I’ve been thinking about asking for an ice cream maker. I can Google up a bunch of models online, but I need some good consumer advice.
I’d like it to be all-electric, and I don’t want it to make a huge quantity. I’d like a good quality machine that will last awhile. I wish there was such a thing as a small gelato maker, but I don’t think this exists.
Anybody have any advice for me?
If you want the real, old-timey experience, get the White Mountain hand-cranked freezer, get the ice, get the salt, get the kids. It doesn’t get any better.
If you want to make ice cream more than once a year, get the Cuisinart electric unit with the bowl you stick in the freezer. Works like a charm, and you can make enough for a family Saturday night every week.
The Cuisenart one is great. My freezer bowl takes about a day to freeze, so if I’m on top of washing my dishes, I can make a new batch every night. The model I got makes up to 1.5 quarts, but I have also made one quart batches successfully.
A little hint - chill all your ingredients for a while before you put them in the ice cream maker. It makes for a better texture right out of the machine.
Another vote for Cuisinart. I’ve been making sugar-free ice cream (sweetened with stevia). Get a second bowl so it can be chilled an ready to go while you’re cleaning up the first bowl.
We owned a manual-crank model, wooden tub and everything.
Then we got an electric one, plastic tub.
The one that we really use is the Cuisinart – fast, easy to clean, simple. We put it in the freezer in a plastic bag in an attempt to keep it from picking up additional flavors.
Best regards,
Mooney252
The wife and I are quite fond of our Rival ice-cream maker, becasue you don’t have to waste the freezer space for the whole bowl. It has a thick disk that sets in the bottom of the freezing chamber, and that is what sits in the freezer. perfect size for the two of us, and very quick.
If you’d like to be able to whip a small batch of ice cream or gelato on the spur of the moment, try this Lello Il Gelataio Electronic Ice Cream Maker. Just pour in your mixture, turn it on and less than an hour later it’s ice cream. The only downside is the price, it’s a bit more expensive than a churn. My younger brother, the chef, has one and loves it. I’ve sampled all sorts of tasty frozen treats he’s made with it.
That looks like what I’m looking for, dwyr, as I like the texture of slow-churned gelato better than American ice cream, and I could not make out from some ads if the machines genuinely churned slower than other freezers. So, this does indeed make a gelato-textured dessert?
Pretty close I think, maybe not quite as dense, but I’ve not sampled gelato extensively enough to be expert. My brother likes to make nontraditional things like cola sorbet, which makes a really good float by the way.