Ice cream has always been a big deal in my house; my mum's first job was in an ice cream parlour, so she has high standards. So when I was testing out Cuisinart's Freeze Ease Pro Ice Cream Maker, she was my chief taste tester, and even she was impressed by the results.
This summer was the year of the soft-serve ice cream maker. However, amidst all the fuss about making Mr Whippy ice creams at home, Cuisinart went back to their classic best ice cream maker and released a new and improved version of the Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelator Professional (which we reviewed and gave five stars).
The new Freeze Ease Pro Ice Cream and Gelato Professional is priced at £299.99, but is currently on offer for £249 at Cuisinart and Lakeland, and is the brand's most powerful ice cream maker. I was lucky to take it for a test run, and after making both a vanilla ice cream and a rhubarb ripple gelato, I've traded my £179 Ninja Creami in for it. I'd even argue that it's a better investment than the Ninja Swirl, which costs the same price.
This ice cream maker has a capacity of 1.5 litres and four easy presets for different frozen treats and a mix-in funnel for creating your own Benny and Jerry's style flavours.
This is the ice cream maker I relied on before trying the Cuisinart. It is a great budget alternative if you're short on space, but want excellent results. But you need to pre-freeze ingredients for 24 hours before use.
Let's start with what this ice cream maker does very well. The Cuisinart Freeze Ease Pro Ice Cream and Gelato Professional has a professional compressor system, which means it can turn a mixture of double cream, milk and sugar into ice cream in just 40 minutes. In fact, when I was testing, I found it was ready even faster than that.
The ice cream maker is super easy to use; just pop your ingredients into the bowl with one of the two mixing paddles. Then, on the LCD screen, select one of the presets for ice cream, gelato, sorbet, or frozen yoghurt, and away you go. You can easily alter the time settings and select the preferred hardness of the mixture to customise the texture to your preference.
While it is recommended to refrigerate your ingredients for a couple of hours first, this isn't essential, and no pre-freezing is required. I mixed up a batch and set it to run while I was eating dinner, so it was ready and waiting for dessert. The ice cream maker also includes a 90-minute Keep Cool function, so I didn't have to worry about scooping it out of the bowl as soon as it was ready.
In contrast, the Ninja Creami and Swirl require you to prefreeze the ingredients for 24 hours, and you have to get it back into the freezer after mixing if you're not eating straight away.
The ice cream in the Cusinart is churned continually while it is being frozen, so the result is a deliciously smooth and creamy texture. It might not be as soft as a 99-style ice cream, but it's not far off. The texture of the gelato and ice cream is alot softer than store-bought ice creams due to the lack of preservatives. Think the texture of gelato in Italy, where the parlours use spatulas instead of a scoop to serve it in a tub.
My word of warning is that if you're serving it straight from the machine bowl, it will melt extremely fast. You can firm it up by adjusting the hardness setting or popping it in the freezer for a few hours.
However, the Cuisinart ice cream maker does have some drawbacks, especially when I compare it to the OG Ninja Creami, which I rated highly in our review and have been using for the last two years.
The Cuisinart version takes up alot of space on a kitchen worktop, and it has to be left in place for 24 hours before use for the compressor to work properly, so it is best suited to households with large kitchens or additional space in a utility room.
Another drawback I found was the ease with which you could use add-ins like chocolate chips. This is an easy, straightforward process in the Ninja Creami that you do as an add-on to the mixing time; in the Cuisinart, you add them 5 minutes before the finish time. This means if you get your timings a little off and your ice cream reaches the desired texture before the allotted time, as mine did, you're scuppered. Once it reached that texture, the paddle wasn't able to move to mix the ingredients in.
Finally, I did miss the convenience of the Ninja Creami and Swirl tubs, which you can bung straight into the freezer after mixing. Instead, you have to go through the messy process of transferring the ice cream to a food container.
Yet, I found these drawbacks minor compared to the benefit of making some of the best ice cream I've ever tasted at home in 40 minutes, and I'm by no means an expert ice cream maker. I found the convenience and results were worth the extra £70 (or £100 if you go by the RRP). It has made it easier than ever to keep my Mum constantly supplied with homemade ice cream.
The only reason I would go back to the original Ninja Creami would be if I downsized back to a smaller kitchen without the countertop space. And if you are choosing between the Cuisinart's professional ice cream maker or the Ninja Swirl, which are the same price and pretty bulky, I'd go for the Cuisinart every time.
Would you make space for this ice cream maker in your home?
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