It’s quite flexible, with 12 settings to create different consistency levels, a great feature for ice cream sandwiches where softer is better. Though it’s fully automatic, you can also change the settings to operate manually. We also liked that it has a brightly lit interface, which would be great for a dimly lit kitchen. This was super easy to set up, plug in, and get started. This compressor-style ice cream maker from Breville is the easiest of all types to use since there’s no advance preparation required: all you need is a recipe and the ingredients. And the color from the M&Ms I mixed in didn't seep into the ice cream. 'I was pleasantly surprised by how creamy-not watery-the ice cream turned out, even before I put it in the freezer. Still, we were quite pleased with the texture of the ice cream itself, which was smoother than we expected. Plus, cleanup, while easy, took a long time, due to us having to melt a bucketful of salt and ice after use. However, we knocked some points off because we had to pre-freeze the actual ice cream (and not just the bowl insert) beforehand. The fact that this is both hands-on (adding ice and salt) and automatic (no hand-churning) made it quite fun to use for our testers. It does come with more than 20 recipes to help you discover your inner Ben & Jerry. To use it correctly, you’ll have to allow slightly more time than with the models that are fully automatic, as well as making sure you’ve got the right kind of ice and salt to put in the outside compartment. The design has a vintage look with a top churner and space around the bowl for the ice and rock salt. It’s versatile, with the ability to make up to 4 quarts of ice cream, gelato, or frozen yogurt with your choice of mix-ins in approximately 30 minutes. This Hamilton Beach ice cream maker is a hybrid of the old-fashioned hand-churn type combined with the newer type electric models. I recently made strawberry ice cream in this machine, and it came out amazingly rich and creamy.' - Cambria Bold, Senior Editor, Cooking Education

'I love that I can make 2 quarts of ice cream right off the bat with this maker, as opposed to the 1.5-quart capacity of the Cuisinart ICE-21, another popular ice cream maker. When you're done churning, the freezer bowl, lid, and mixing arm are easy to clean in the sink. Other details that make this ice cream maker stand out are its spout for adding creative mix-ins to your ice cream and built-in cord storage. Less than a half-hour later, you’ve got two quarts of ready-to-eat custom, homemade ice cream! Just pre-freeze the two-quart container, place it on the base, add your ingredients, and turn it on. The sleekness of its brushed stainless-steel design may make it easy to tuck away in a cupboard, but it also looks good right out on your kitchen countertop. View On Amazon View On Walmart View On Williams-SonomaĪ long-time favorite of the Simply Recipes team, this Cuisinart ice cream maker remains the best of its kind because it really does have all the right stuff: good looks, strong build, great performance, and lasting power.

We’re sure there’s one here that’s just right for you! Here, the best ice cream makers, according to both our research and test data. Of course, we'll keep on testing and updating this list as we collect more data (read: eat more ice cream). Using both a regular no-cook vanilla ice cream recipe and a vegan cookie dough one, we rated how well each machine churned and distributed mix-ins, the texture of the resulting ice cream, how easy it was to use and clean, and more. To help you choose, we took our top picks to our Lab's dedicated test kitchen. There are a few questions you’ll want to ask to determine which ice cream maker is best for you, including how much ice cream you want to make at once and how much work you want to put into making it.

The other great bonus is you can also take charge of what ingredients are-and aren't-in your treat. This means a tomato gazpacho made into a semifreddo for lunch, or maybe throw in a frozen strawberry daiquiri or a frozen virgin pomegranate citrus sangria into the mix! Really, the possibilities are endless. If you’ve been considering having an ice cream maker in your kitchen, we’re here for you! The choices available in the market are wider than ever before, with newer models that work in novel and interesting ways, as well as our favorite classic models.Īnd it's not only ice cream: Some of these machines can make any recipe into a semi-frozen or frozen treat.

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