Dualit's incredibly in-demand ice cream maker is the best example of a no-pre-freeze version out there – I just tried it with delectable results

In my opinion, treating yourself to one of the best ice cream makers is virtually an act of self care during a sweltering summer. This is especially true if you buy one that freezes as it churns, like the Dualit Ice Cream Maker.

Admittedly, at almost £350, it’s an indulgence. But in addition to ice cream and sorbet, it can make yogurt and slushies too – all in under one hour from mixing to consuming. I used it during a particularly warm July week and it reinforced my love of all things ice cream.

In a nutshell

The Dualit Ice Cream Maker is expensive for a reason. The integrated compressor is like a mini freezer, so in addition to churning your ice cream mixtures, it freezes them too. In my opinion these are the best ice cream makers to buy, as nothing has to be frozen in advance, so you can make ice cream on a whim.

It’s nicely designed with a compact footprint that doesn’t take over your kitchen worktop, and the digital display is easy to navigate. With five separate functions to choose from, ice cream and gelato aren’t the only creations you can use it for. It’ll also make slushies, sorbet, and even home made yogurt.

During my time reviewing it, I enjoyed silky smooth ice creams, punchy sorbet, tasty slushies, and even tried my hand at making yogurt. All the functions worked well, though if you like to cater for bigger groups, you might find its relatively small capacity frustrating at times. And I had more success when I used my own trusted recipes over the ones included in the manual.

Who reviewed this ice cream maker?

Helen McCue

After completing a Home Economics degree, Helen went on to work for the Good Housekeeping Institute and has been reviewing home appliances ever since. She lives in a small village in Buckinghamshire in the UK, where she reviews all sorts of home and garden appliances using her wealth of experience.

Helen used the Dualit Ice Cream Maker in place of her usual model, stocking her freezer with three different ice cream flavours as well as a tub of sorbet. Reviewing this appliance during a hot and sticky July didn’t feel like work, although after all the ice cream she consumed, the work is going to have to happen in the gym!

Unboxing

It’s been a while since I've unboxed a kitchen appliance and come across polystyrene in the box. Given that most kitchen appliance manufacturers have eliminated polystyrene packaging, I was somewhat disappointed to find it. But I do acknowledge that appliances with refrigerants can require extra protection in transit.

The ice cream maker comes out of the box pretty much ready to go. The removable parts and accessories consist of the main stainless steel bowl, mixing paddle, the lid, a spatula, and a measuring cup. All of these parts require a quick wash before the first use.

The dial control coupled with the digital display are intuitive to use. There are five settings to choose from. The first is cooling, this cycle operates without the mixing paddle moving. It can be used to pre-cool mixes or cool the machine prior to making ice cream.

The second setting is manual stirring, this one can be used to stir mixtures or mix in extra ingredients like chocolate chips at the end of a cycle. The third setting is yogurt, the fourth is the main ice cream, gelato and sorbet setting, and finally there’s the slushie setting.

Once a setting is selected by pressing the dial, you can then adjust the timer. It’s very simple and the manual gives good explanations of settings. It’s worth pointing out that while the capacity of the bowl is 1.2 litres, the manual advises a maximum of 720ml for ice cream, gelato and sorbet. For slushies, you can add a maximum of 600ml, and when making yogurt it can cope with up to 920ml.

My biggest first impression is that it’s a really neat and compact size, it takes up a lot less space on my worktop than my current Cuisinart ice cream maker. I like the matte black finish, which looks subtle and doesn't draw too much attention.

What's it like to use?

Making ice cream

The manual doesn’t include many recipes, there are two ice cream, one gelato, and one sorbet recipe. So I chose to get started with the basic vanilla ice cream recipe. It’s a simple enough recipe that just involves whisking sugar and milk until the sugar dissolves, then adding cream and vanilla.

The recipe recommends setting the timer for 40-60 minutes. I set it for 50 minutes, but stopped it early after just 40 minutes. At this point the ice cream was nicely frozen, but soft enough to remove from the bowl and the paddle without force.

It needed a couple of hours in the freezer to finish firming up, but even after it’d been in the freezer overnight, it remained beautifully soft and scoopable. The creamy texture was very indulgent. My only complaint was that for me, this particular recipe is too sweet and a bit heavy on the vanilla. Both of which are easily rectified next time.

The recipe made 386g, which for context, is slightly short of what you’ll get in a typical tub of Haagen Dasz (400g). I also measured the noise level while it was churning and it was a very pleasant 59dB.

There are a couple of chocolate recipes in the manual, one for chocolate ice cream and one for chocolate gelato. The main difference being that the gelato has less cream and includes two egg yolks, so this is the one I went for.

Annoyingly, instead of listing chocolate or chocolate powder, the recipes require the use of Dualit Hot Chocolate Sachets, which I didn’t have. So I substituted this with standard 65% chocolate. The recipes also require a Dualit Milk Frother Max, so in another workaround, I heated the milk, cream, and chocolate chunks on the hob instead.

Adding warm milk to raw egg yolks is always a bit nerve wracking, but thankfully they didn’t cook and the mixture combined well. The recipe states that you can put the warm mixture straight in the ice cream maker. But this seems crazy to me, so I waited for it to cool down and chilled it in the fridge until it was about 10C.

This time I decided to use the cooling function for 10 minutes before adding the ice cream mixture. It didn’t make much difference to the overall churn time though which, like the vanilla, took around 40 minutes.

The finished chocolate gelato was less creamy and indulgent than the vanilla ice cream. It was also lacking a bit of sweetness, but that’s probably my fault for the chocolate substitution I made.

I ended up serving the vanilla ice cream with the chocolate gelato for the perfect balance in flavour and sweetness. This worked really well, but I’d also be keen to try a different recipe for chocolate ice cream/ gelato that isn’t developed for Dualit hot chocolate sachets.

As a bit of a benchmark I was interested to try an ice cream recipe I’ve made before. So I wasted no time in making my favourite coffee ice cream. It includes milk, cream, sugar coffee, egg yolks and vanilla.

I made up the mixture and chilled it in the fridge for several hours, then churned it until frozen, which again, took about 40 minutes. It turned out smooth, creamy, and just as delicious as I remembered.

While the ice cream maker freezes the ice creams, it’s still a good idea to give your tasty creation a couple of hours in the freezer to firm up properly.

I couldn’t review this model without trying a sorbet. And while I adore lemon sorbet, it is a bit predictable and I was in the mood to try something different. At the time of reviewing, Wimbledon had just finished and strawberry season was in full swing, so I looked up a strawberry sorbet recipe.

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The recipe I chose was very easy to put together, I had to heat sugar and water to make a syrup, then once cooled I blended this with fresh strawberries. Lastly, you add the juice of a lemon.

The sorbet took around 50 minutes (I made the maximum 720ml capacity). And I can’t tell you how incredible it tastes. The strawberry flavour is so intense and delicious, the texture is perfect too, with no icy shards. I think I might have to ditch strawberry ice cream in favour of strawberry sorbet from now on.

Making slushies

There’s not really any slushie drink recipes in the manual. Just basic advice that says you can use up to 600ml of your favourite drink. So I made up a latte with the hope of producing a frappe style coffee drink.

I added cold oat milk and a couple of teaspoons of maple syrup to a double shot of espresso. It was a single serve portion of approximately 300ml. I poured this into the machine, selected the slushie mode and put the timer on for 40 minutes.

It took about 25 minutes, which felt quite long for one drink, but it was worth it for the delicious frappe style coffee I was able to enjoy at the end. There were no hard frozen ice crystals, it was the perfect slushie texture that could be drunk through a straw. I even topped it with a splash of double cream to make it extra decadent.

The only minor annoyance was that unlike a proper slushie machine, you have to get it into the glass through a combination of tipping the liquid and spooning the more solid bits out. But after a quick stir with a straw it’s well combined and mine stayed the perfect frozen slushie texture, without melting, right to the end of the drink.

I also tried to make a raspberry slushie using a posh raspberry cordial. This time I made 600ml, which is the maximum slushie capacity and enough to serve two people. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, so set the timer to 40 minutes again.

It took the full 40 minutes to create the raspberry slushies, which is quite a while. They were absolutely delicious though, with a great smooth icy texture that went easily through a straw. It was very reminiscent of childhood raspberry slushie drinks.

Personally I wouldn’t buy this ice cream maker purely for the slushie mode, but it’s a great option that allows you to get more functionality from an expensive appliance. And if you only want occasional slushie drinks, it’s ideal.

Making yoghurt

I eat yogurt every day for breakfast with granola and berries, but despite being the type of person who enjoys making lots of things from scratch, yogurt is something I always just pick up at the supermarket.

You can make up to 920ml of yogurt at a time in this appliance. I followed the included recipe though, which uses 550ml whole milk and 50ml yogurt. There’s minimal prep, just stir together the yogurt and milk and then pour into the ice cream maker.

The recipe advises setting the timer for seven hours when using the yogurt function. And admittedly, that’s a fair old chunk of time, but this is a set-it-and-go scenario, so it can be left to do its thing while you go about your day.

When the timer finished, the machine automatically switched to cool mode, chilling down the slightly warm yogurt. I left it to cool in the machine for around an hour, by this point the yogurt had chilled down to 8C.

I then transferred it to a tub and put it in the fridge. When I tried it on my granola the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised by the smooth creamy texture and mild yogurt flavour. It’s a bit thinner than my usual thick Greek yogurt, but works out a lot cheaper, so it gets a massive thumbs up from me.

What's it like to clean?

All the removable parts can go in the dishwasher, which is great news when they’re covered in sticky ice cream and sorbet mixtures. That said, I frequently washed everything by hand and found it all really quick and easy to wash.

The machine itself didn’t really get dirty, the odd splash of ice cream mixture was easily wiped away from the matte black sides of the machine. It’s the shiny mirrored top part that needs a bit of a buff after use to remove fingerprints and marks. But even this comes clean easily after a quick wipe over with a microfibre cloth.

How does it compare to competitors?

I previously reviewed and still own the Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelato Professional which I love for many of the same reasons I enjoyed using this Dualit model. The Cuisinart I own has now been superseded by the Cuisinart Freeze Ease Pro Ice Cream Maker which is an upgraded version. At around £300 it’s cheaper than the Dualit with a slightly larger capacity, but the compromise is that it takes up more space.

The Ninja Creami is a totally different proposition, but since it’s significantly cheaper (around £250), it is worth considering. If space is at a premium, this is the compact choice. The big but, is that you have to wait for your mixture to freeze for 24 hours before churning. So it doesn’t give the same instant satisfaction as the Dualit and Cuisinart models.

Should you buy the Dualit Ice Cream Maker?

If you want to get serious about homemade ice cream, then it’s essential to invest in a model like this with a built-in compressor. If you’re anything like me, you’re far more likely to make up a batch of home made ice cream if you don’t have to think about pre-freezing a bowl or a mixture 24 hours in advance.

I particularly like the size and smaller footprint of this Dualit model, and it’s nice to have a few additional functions bundled in. I didn’t love the included recipes, but had great success with recipes I found online.

Other than the price tag, the only major drawback is that it doesn’t have a huge capacity. But that just means I’m more likely to make up a few batches and enjoy a variety of different flavours, so in my opinion that isn’t a deal breaker.