All About Electric Ice Cream Makers

By Mariana Haaga


If you enjoy ice cream you will love having an electric ice cream maker. These home appliances are easy to use and are a fun way to make custom freezing treat flavors in the comfort of your own home. The two most popular kinds of electric best ice cream maker devices are those which use a bowl that you place in the freezer ahead of time and those that use a compressor. Some crucial questions to ask yourself before you make a purchase are which of the two kinds will work best for your needs, what capacity will you need, will the dimensions and weight that you select fit on your counter top or within your storage space and how rapidly does the maker churn a batch of ice cream.

Now the difficult part, which ice cream maker to buy? First, there is the old-fashioned hand crank design maker, but that appeared so pre-industrial. Even if they claim to become fun for kids, mine would get cranky after one crank. The gel canister maker must be pre-frozen, which demands some advance planning. Nevertheless, it is affordable and can make some excellent ice cream. Finally, there are self-cooling machines that don't require pre-freezing, but they're more expensive and take up a large amount of room on a shelf or even cabinet.

After reading reviews online, my personal decision came down to two different Cuisinart machines, the ICE-21 ($50) and the ICE-50BC ($250). We liked the price and evaluations of the ICE-21. The ICE-50BC is a self-cooling device which is capable of making batch following batch of ice cream without pre-freezing, very tempting... In the end, fate (and a 20% off coupon) introduced me to Bed, Bath as well as Beyond where the last ICE-20 (the previous model to the ICE-21) was upon closeout for only $25 - the very same cost as my gelato tab a few days earlier. This was a no-brainer, I purchased it!

At one time you had to wait three or four hours for your freezing treat to be ready however technology has come a long way and both varieties typically take anywhere from only twenty to thirty minutes. A nice feature of both kinds is to have a transparent lid, as it is fun to watch the components churn as they turn into smooth ice cream. Other features to look for tend to be easy clean up, quiet operation, multi speeds, timer and auto safety shut off and enormous openings for adding the ingredients.

Some of the more popular brands that carry each types of electric ice cream makers are Cuisinart, Lello, KitchenAid and Musso. You can easily do an online comparison to help you decide which kind and brand is right for you. After some practice, it will not be long until you are making ice cream, sorbets and sherbets which rival the well-known ice cream makers.




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