Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker Machine, 1.5 Quart Sorbet, Frozen Yogurt Maker, Double Insulated, White, ICE-21P1

Works perfectly
I have been wanting to try making my own ice cream for a while. I have a brother who actually works at a chocolate chop where they make their own ice cream, so it was nice having someone I could bounce ideas off of.I wanted to try and make some ice cream using some moonshine. I know that might not sound appealing but it was peach pie flavor and with what all I used to sub some techniques and make it, it turned out perfect. The look on my boyfriends face when he tried the product right after making it, said enough.I want to try more but when your schedule is busy and unpredictable it can be a little hard to get to. Over all it does a fantastic job at making ice cream if you know what you are doing when it comes to prepping what needs to go in prior. I have a deep freezer in my garage and that is where I store the main tub in so its not in the way of my freeze that is apart of my fridge.**#1 thing** invest into proper Tupperware for storing ice cream if you are looking to invest into this. After making that batch I did I completely forgot. I have a basic plastic Tupperware container I used, which wasnt bad but I feel it would of been better had I used something intended for ice cream.There was stars for Airtight storage. This device comes with no storage option. There isnt a top for the tub though that would of been a huge plus if the company had made a flexible rubber top that could be tightly placed around the tub so after making ice cream you could use same container to store it, but sadly no. There is no airtight storage option that comes with this thing. So I left that rating at 0. Not sure why its there because it throws off rating for the item and false hope for something it doesnt even have.Another thing to keep in mind, be very careful when handling the tub after it has been in the freezer for a long time. I accidentally dropped mine first time of use, due to the slippery thin crystal formations from my freeze and it slightly dented the outside of it. Even though it feels heavy duty, it still can be damaged easily. It still works 100% and makes ice cream without a problem and didnt break anything to where anything is coming out of the tub to help with freezing but, just keep in mind maybe wrap it in a towel so it clings well to that if you have to move with it.

Slushy and Soft? Fixed With Better Freezing Methods
I have more of a problem with the manual than the machine, because it wasn’t the troubleshooting help it could have been. What did help was this page’s Question and Answer section, with all the user feedback!So my first batch didn’t turn out so well. I used half and half, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. I’d have used regular cream, but I can’t find any pure heavy cream in my area that isn’t full of preservatives and additives containing free glutamic acid and other scary stuff.I froze the bowl for 14 hours. The gel was frozen solid. The manual said that the bowl should be in the freezer for 16-24 hours, but it also said that when you didn’t hear the liquid gel swishing, it was sufficiently frozen. So I thought optimistically, “Oh! That must mean my freezer’s just a super-freezer and got it cold enough in record time! Yay!” Um, no.I have learned that just because the gel is frozen, that doesn’t mean its temperature is as low as it can go – or should go. As I discovered, it needs to go a lot lower than “frozen solid” to work with this machine. Since it probably freezes around 32 degrees F (0 Celsius), the manual probably shouldn’t say to use the lack of swishing sound as an indicator to readiness. (It’s less misleading to say that hearing liquid is a definite sign it’s NOT ready.)The actual problem I encountered in my unsuccessful first try was that the mix stopped moving. Parts of it stayed on top of the paddle in a semi-frozen slushy state and parts of it remained on the sides, still unfrozen, and that was the stuff that wouldn’t freeze up at all. Since I was confident my bowl was cold enough (uh, yeah!) and the manual cautioned not to stick things in the bowl while the machine was on, I kept turning it off and moving the solid stuff to the sides, then turning it back on. Rather ungainly way to get what turned out to be a milkshake that, when frozen, turned into ice crystals.The next time, I did three things differently, and got very nice, acceptably smooth ice cream without omnipresent ice crystals.First, I used our non-self-defrosting freezer to chill the gel bowl. Freezers that are set to self defrost work by warming up every so often to control frost. Stand-alone freezers like chest freezers or upright freezers come in two styles: Self-defrosting and non-self-defrosting. We use the latter type, the one that has to be manually defrosted, because colder freezers are necessary for long-term storage of meat. A freezer that doesn’t self-defrost keeps its cold temperature steady, with the exception of when the freezer is opened or loses power. So I stuck the bowl in that one at the almost-coldest setting, 7 out of 8.Second, I chilled the mixture overnight in the fridge. Not sure that did anything much to improve things, because it seemed about the same amount of cold as my first try.The last thing I did differently was that while the ice cream machine was working, when parts of the mixture started freezing up on top, I used a rubber spatula to recirculate them. I kept using the spatula pretty vigorously the entire churning time. That worked well and was kinda fun.I was left with something that was definitely ice cream. Not slushy, not prone to melting at all. The ice cream didn’t melt instantly and the inner bowl was coated with a thin, hard-frozen layer of ice cream in places that stayed there. I rushed to get the ice cream into freezer containers, but I don’t think it was necessary this time. Whatever was in that bowl stayed frozen for a long, long time. Fifteen minutes later, I could still eat it frozen with a wooden spoon.So I came away the wiser and with better ice cream. Cold is key. I don’t think you need to use a non-self-defrosting freezer like I did, necessarily, but if you chill it the full 24 hours at the coldest setting and it still isn’t cold enough, it’s possible your self-defrosting freezer isn’t doing the job.I was left with two more tips to offer anyone who might be interested. One, if the bowl is that cold, don’t wash it right away, or it will freeze some of the washing water on it in an almost invisible layer. Two, I swear that bowl seemed cold enough to possibly make another batch. Had I had one ready, I’d have tried it. If I try it, I’ll report back.Hope that helps someone else who encounters the same problem of partially frozen slushy-milkshake ice cream. It’s most likely because the bowl isn’t cold enough.UPDATE 10/23/2014: Well, it’s the next day, and I am thrilled to report I got extra mileage out of the ice cream maker. I froze the bowl at the almost-coldest setting in my non-self-defrosting freezer for about 20 hours. I had a large batch of butterscotch ice cream mix ready and a small batch of coffee ice cream mix ready, my own recipes. I first ran the machine with the large batch for about 18 minutes. (I learned something important here: The larger batches circulate MUCH better than the smaller ones. This one hardly needed to be coaxed with the spatula. On the downside, there was so much aeration that I had to scoop out some at the top to prevent its warming up because it was leaving the icy part of the bowl.) Then I scooped most of the ice cream into a container and popped it in the freezer. I left a bit of the ice cream on the paddle, since the flavors weren’t bad to mix with the next batch and I wanted to preserve any coldness I could. I did not wash the bowl out for the same reason, and also because I didn’t want it warmed by delays or water. So I then reassembled everything and started the machine and added the small batch of coffee custard mix. It took about 12 minutes to freeze this mini-batch into gorgeous ice cream. Didn’t even start to melt. So I basically got 1 1/2 bowls out of one freezer day. Yay! Hopefully I didn’t do anything to risk the ice cream maker’s breaking – I was pretty careful to mix in the frozen part with the non-frozen part together.I learned something else here, too, that many of you must already know – the more fat, the more like store-bought ice cream. Half and half alone without cream or butter added wasn’t quite smooth enough, though it’s darn good. I thought it would work because some recipes in the book call for 2 cups milk and 2 cups cream, and it did make nice ice cream, but it occurred to me that I don’t know if half & half is half cream, half milk by weight or by volume. Anyone know?UPDATE 9/23/2021: It’s years later and it’s still working. Haven’t used it tons, but somewhat, with a variety of dairy and nondairy ice creams. Pretty pleased with this machine holding up and upgraded it two stars.UPDATE: 5/3/2023: My inner bowl is just starting to flake a bit on the rim, though I have taken a lot of care with washing it and not using abrasives. I found out an interesting factoid from the manufacturer whom I contacted. (Conair) They said of the inner bowl, “The bowl is aluminum covered with a xylan non-stick coating.” So apparently the part that comes in contact with the food is fluoropolymer-based and has similarities to Teflon and PTFE. If one were to heat it past a certain temperature, I presume it might not be safe for birds/parrots/avian pets who are nearby. But I imagine/hope that in its normal use, and washing in warm water, it would be fine.

Es lo mejor, es fácil de usar, fácil de lavar, no haces un batidillo, y queda delicioso.El bote se saca y lo tienes que congelar 24 hrs antes (si tienes espacio lo puedes dejar ahí para cuando quieras), en una batidora mezclas los ingredientes que quieres ya sea helado cremoso o nieve, usas la maquina y listo! en 20 min tienes un helado.El bote es de 1 litro, así que para una reunión familiar 4 días antes estuvimos haciendo la preparación para juntar 4 litros de helado y lo guardamos en el congelador. Así que es también puede ser una opción, preparar tus helados antes, guardarlos en un bote y lo mantienes en tu congelador para cuando quieras.

ホイッパーで混ぜながら凍らせて…で作るアイスに限界を感じたので購入シンプルなオンオフのボタンのみの作りで分かりやすく使いやすかったシンブルなバニラアイスも好評で今後もつ買い続けていきたい

We had to replace our 30 year old machine which needed bags of ice and salt and we weren’t sure we’d find a replacement that we loved as much as our original one. This one works great! So far we’ve made coffee ice cream and cherry vanilla ice cream and raspberry sorbet and they all came out perfectly. Of course, a lot of the taste and texture has to do with the recipe you’re using, and we only make ice cream with a good egg yolk based custard, to make it really creamy, but we’d heard that the one downside of some machines is that the paddle doesn’t always churn all of the contents. This one absolutely does, and we love the open top so that we can add things like nuts and cherries near the end of the cycle as it’s churning. It’s also a good size so doesn’t take a lot of room on the shelf.