 "Be Creative" | 2008-09-29 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1I3YTWKXG8SHJ |
| I read the reviews, and yes, you get what you pay for. This is a great price, but you must make your own recipes. The simple chocolate recipe is horrible, waaay to much cream (causes tummy ache). So if you have the time to 'experiment' in the kitchen, it is a cool product. My advice: freeze the bowl like everyone says but also, you MUST refrigerate your mix as well before you pour it in. Also, there is only a short window from when your ice cream dispenses properly 30-40mins, then it's hard, then it starts to melt! Overall, I'd rather pay Mr. Softee $2. |
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 "Great Machine" | 2008-09-20 |
| - Reviewed By User: AOERN78L66KZ4 |
| Great machine for the price. Works great as long as you follow the directions. I tried to make back to back batches, but that wouldn't work, so the basin is only good for one batch of ice cream at a time without refreezing for twelve more hours. But overall, a very good machine for the price. |
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| "Very kid friendly. Enjoyable to use. Easy cleanup." | 2008-08-08 |
| - Reviewed By sowens632 |
Hi,
I received this as a gift. Started out with the vanilla ice cream recipe. Followed it exactly. Tasted wonderful. Our kids had fun mixing the ingredients and waiting for the soft serve to be ready. I agree with the other posters that it takes longer than 15 minutes. Was worried at 15 minutes that something was wrong. Having used the machine now, I would say about 25 minutes gets the ice cream ready. If the ice cream is runny. Wait. It is ready when the ice cream comes out thick and long.
We keep the bowl for the ice cream maker in the freezer so that it is ready at any time.
Cleanup is very easy. A little soap and water for the plastic parts. I just rinse the bowl out with water and put it straight back into the freezer. Paper towels will stick to the inside (cold) if you try drying it that way.....
We made the lemon sorbet today. We made the sugar water solution the previous day so that it could cool in the fridge. Today, the kids squeezed the lemons and the sorbet came out great.
It seems that most of the negative reviews are for a few constant reasons. One...No the ice cream maker does not mix the ingredients for you. All it does is mix the ice cream mixture into ice cream. No different than a rock salt ice cream maker. But the Cuisinart is much easier.
Two..."My home freezer doesnt get my bowl cold enough." I have a few thoughts. First. Maybe you need to put a thermometer in your freezer and see how cold it is. If your freezer is above 10 degrees, you should turn the temp down. A regular freezer should be around 5 degrees to 0 or below. I am talking about like a Sears freezer, not some special freezer.
I could see where the top freezer on a fridge might have trouble holding that temp if it is opened often. We use our standup freezer in the basement. Also, if your ice cream comes out runny, maybe you have not waited long enough. It takes about 25 minutes for me.
On a side note. This ice cream maker produces a good amount of ice cream. It serves about 8 people. We are talking about whole cream and sugar here. You really shouldnt make the servings huge if you want to enjoy the Cuisinart often.
Again, we like the machine. Clean up is a breeze. I mean, you are cleaning up ice cream...not very hard to do. Enjoy.
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 "A thorn in my side" | 2008-07-14 |
| - Reviewed By User: A50Z4N6V5MEZF |
I HATE this machine. I wish I could return it. The biggest problem I have with it is that the machine has to be assembled just right or else the unfrozen ice cream leaks out. Every time I've used it, I've ended up with a big puddle all over the counter. I know that it's operator error and not anything to do with the machine, but it is still enough to make me want to get rid of this piece of junk.
Next, in order for it to dispense, the ice cream has to be barely frozen. Imagine if you were to have a frozen bowl of ice cream that has been left out for about 20 minutes and is starting to turn into a soupy mess. That's the consistency it has to be in order to dispense. That's no fun-- it totally melts in about 30 seconds. If it gets any more frozen than the soupy mess previously described, it is too thick to come out of the dispenser.
That leads me to my next complaint-- the canister doesn't hold a freeze long enough to do much good. This is probably because it has to be so runny in order to dispense. I was under the impression when I got this that it could be used as a regular ice cream maker if you didn't intend to use it as a soft serve machine. Wrong!
Most of my complaints are my own fault since I failed to completely understand the capabilities of this product before purchase. Before purchasing this, be sure that you understand exactly what it is that you are buying. |
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| "Hope you have a big, VERY COLD freezer" | 2008-07-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1Y35FBTQKQWII |
| I was under the impression that this was fully automatic, meaning you didn't need to find a huge spot in an already over crowded freezer to pre-freeze the bowl. Also, the freezer needs to be zero degrees. The average refrigerator freezer is NOT zero degrees. I opened this and expected to have ice cream in 20 minutes, not 13 hours later. I am disappointed. It is expensive, especially when the Tastee Freeze down the street has cones for 99 cents! I am going to pack it up and give it as a gift rather than buy a new deep freezer to accomodate the bowl. |
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 "ice cream review" | 2008-07-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3OWS3A0703YMI |
| I thought this would be fun for the kids at my cookouts. It works only if you freeze the bowl and keep the ingredients really really cold prior to mixing. Otherwise, you just get soup. |
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| "Too Icy to be soft serve!" | 2008-06-05 |
| - Reviewed By cfriemann |
the pics on the box show a very creamy soft serve (I know, you shouldn't believe what a box or ad shows anyway since it's usually photoshopped and styled). The end product is extremely icy in texture like a sorbet, not at all what soft serve is. Mine didn't even dispense because the bottom of the freezer bowl was too cold and froze the cream almost immediately on contact, so the dispenser hole was clogged. The dispenser hole is way too small to dispense easily it seems.
I did use the receipe for a low fat ice cream included in the booklet. It used 2% milk and half&half instead of whole milk and heavy cream. I also substituted Splenda for sugar. So I dunno if this altered the freezing ability too much (too much water in low fat milk perhaps). I'll be trying the full fat version to compare. I guess if we cared about the fat content we wouldn't be eating ice cream in the first place right?
Also if you use a fruit puree with seeds, make sure you strain it since that can also clog the dispenser. I recommend just using juice and not puree in the machine, it sinks to the bottom of the mixer bowl and clogs it. |
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| "Works great!" | 2008-05-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: ADINX2TO3MN7Z |
I was a little hesitant to buy this since the reviews are basically split, but it works great for us. I have a regular freezer above my fridge and I turned it to its coldest setting. I keep the freezer bowl in the back (and center) of the freezer, directly in front of the cold air. The bowl gets so cold that I usually can't wash it within a few hours after making ice cream since water freezes on it immediately and paper towels break off and stick to it... Even regular towels leave fibers frozen to the side of the bowl.
The first time we made ice cream, we didn't get really good results. I think the reasons are that the bowl wasn't cold enough, and we used the lower-fat vanilla recipe which lacked heavy cream to make it the right consistancy. The second time we got it right. That tells you that even if you get bad results the first time, maybe you're doing something wrong and just try again!
Although the ice cream is good, I must say that it's NOT exactly the same as you'd buy at an ice cream stand. It's a little lighter & fluffier and not as solid. Actually we like it better when it's too cold to dispense, because it's colder & closer to the kind you'd buy. The mix-it-ins don't work very well for us, but we just sprinkle the toppings on afterwards if we want them. So far we've tried the simple vanilla, chocolate, mint, strawberry-banana frozen yogurt and orange creamsicle sherbert. We did not like the chocolate at all, but the others were pretty good (You should use half mint and half vanilla extract for the mint ice cream because it tastes too much like double-mint gum if you don't). I always reduce the amount of sugar by half, and it's still very sweet. Also it usually takes 20-25 minutes to make, unless you're making less than half the recipe. Eventually I'll have all the recipes modified to our taste after trial and error.
As to the clean-up, other than the freezer bowl which I find has to defrost before washing & re-freezing, cleaning everything is pretty easy. I take all the pieces apart and let them sit in hot soapy water for a few minutes.
I ended up buying another bowl so we can make two kinds at once. Overall we're really happy. We haven't had any store-bought ice cream since we got this, although I have spent about $70 in ingredients! I think I went a little overboard though, at least now I'll only have to re-stock the milk and cream.
Check out the pictures I uploaded; I think our results look better than the pictures on the box! |
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| "Easy to make" | 2008-05-27 |
| - Reviewed By cgmacdonald |
I received this as a Christmas present and have made ice cream at least a dozen times since. The only time it didn't turn out was when I only froze the bowl for 7 hours instead of all day or overnight. We just have a normal freezer and it freezes just fine in there.
We usually make the simple vanilla or simple chocolate recipes which are as the name says, simple. Takes about 5 minutes to make the batter and then about 16 minutes to freeze. We only make a 1/2 batch, so I don't know if it would take longer with a larger batch.
One trick we learned with the mix-ins is to chill them first. We put the sprinkles and mini chocolate chips in the freezer while the ice cream was being made. They dispensed easily, nothing got stuck, and cleanup of the dispensers was easy. Many parts are dishwasher safe, but cleanup is more involved than our traditional ice cream maker. |
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| "yummy icecream" | 2008-05-18 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1C0F7X52YYAVP |
This ice
cream maker is easy to use and easy to clean! |
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