Cuisinart Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker review: simple to use but tricky to master
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer: One Minute Review
If you can’t put your hands on the Ninja Creami vortex, the Cuisinart soft ice cream maker is probably the next best thing to do. It’s not as advanced as the Ninja machine, but once you get used to its quirks, it can produce a smooth and creamy dessert.
Preparing ice cream is easy, and Cuisinart offers a good online recipe book to get you started. However, you must keep an eye on the machine to make sure that it stops when the mixing temperature reaches the right temperature. It’s too late to stop it, you have to wait for it to melt, or pull the mixer out and spoon the ice cream out. This is not the end of the world, but the timer will help avoid such problems.
The miniature hot plates used to keep the seasoning or melt the chocolate melted is a great touch and works great, but I don’t think three different top containers are needed, especially since the design of their configuration mechanism means Most candies are too big.
It can be fun to use, but it’s hard to justify spending on the ice cream machine offered by Cuisinart Soft unless you eat frozen desserts a few times a week. It is affordable and is usually purchased at a discount, but it takes up a lot of valuable space in your kitchen
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer: Price and Availability
- Priced at $179.95 / £200 / au $249
- Sometimes discounts
- About half the Ninja Cream Swirl
Cuisinart Soft Serve ice cream maker is priced at $179.95/£200/au $249. Directly available from Cuisinart’s online storeand third-party retailers Amazon. Sometimes discounts are available and you will find all the best prices today below.
For comparison, the Ninja Cream Swirl costs almost twice the price of $349. At the time of writing (February 2025), international prices and availability have not been announced yet.
If you have a KitchenAid Stand blender, the ice cream manufacturer’s attachment is similar to Cuisinart, using a frozen bowl and a rotary motor to stir your ingredients while freezing, but lacks a soft server dispenser. It retails for $99.99/£149/au $209.
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer: Design
- Clumsy, not very attractive
- High-quality small seasonings
- Top part orchestration is not ideal
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer is a large device at 17.7 inches/45 cm and it only fits under my kitchen wall cabinet. It has a relatively small footprint (9.4 x 11 inches / 24 x 28 cm), which is more compact than many coffee machines. You may not want to keep it on the kitchen counter at all times, though. Its white plastic chassis is functional and easy to clean, but not a very beautiful thing.
From a mechanical point of view, this is very simple. You will freeze a double-insulated bowl ahead of time, which will cool your ingredients to freeze them while stirring. Once the ice cream is ready, simply turn off the motor, turn on the faucet at the bottom, and pour the finished dessert into a smooth stream (provided that you correctly judge the timing).
There are three removable top-level containers on the top right of the machine, and I initially packed the candy. Unfortunately, I later realized that due to the size of the internal mechanism, they can only allocate very small items, such as sprinkling water. Toppings like M&M or nuts are too big, which is a shame. All three toppings are distributed through a funnel, which pushes them into your ice cream when poured. This mostly worked well during my testing, but some sprinkling ended up causing excessive warheads.
The soft-serve ice cream maker also has a small hot card on the left side of the bowl and comes with a small pot that you can use to melt the sauce to pour into the finished ice cream.
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer: Performance
Cuisinart’s website offers simple recipes for soft-service ice cream manufacturers, all of which can suit your taste. I’ll start Fresh strawberry ice creamis a mixture of double cream, milk, shells of strawberries, lemon juice and sugar.
You need to keep the bowl upright while freezing, but I found it easy to install in the deepest drawer in the refrigerator and I was able to fill it up with small frozen items to make the most of the space until I was ready to use it.
You need to mix mix (check out our overview The best mixerif you’ve been thinking about upgrading), then cool the mixture for at least four hours and start stirring.
Once your mixture is cold, it’s time to start. The frozen bowl is easy to fit inside the machine and then clip the lid to the top lid. Once in place, you can start the machine with the switch on the left; make sure to push the lever into the “closed” position and pour the mixture into the L-shaped hole at the top. I forgot to check the leverage on my first try, and it was a confusing mistake.
The mini hotplate can be activated by rotating the control dial all the way to the right and working well during the test. When your dessert is ready, it will lightly heat as the ice cream churns and melt a cube or two of chocolates when the dessert is ready.
Unlike the Ninja Cream Swirl, the ice cream makers offered by Cuisinart Soft rely on gravity to distribute your ice cream, so it has to be the right consistency. If you allow the mixture to cool too long, it will not flow through the dispenser and eventually the stirring mechanism will stop rotating. This won’t ruin the machine, but you’ll need to wait for the ice cream to melt a little before you can move on, or remove the lid and agitation mechanism (which can be tricky if the ice cream gets stiff) and then oop. Remove the dessert.
For best results, do not stir for more than 20 minutes. If I’m not sure I’ve reached the right consistency, I’ll find it helpful to turn off the machine and then use a spoon to scald some of the mixture from the bowl to evaluate its thickness. A programmable timer would be a great addition to avoid accidental over-closing of the mixture.
I also found that the blade didn’t quite reach the edge of the bowl, which created a layer of hardened ice cream that could not be distributed. It’s hard to remove with a spoon without completely thawing everything.
- Performance score: 3.5 / 5
Should you buy Cuisinart soft service ice cream maker
property |
notes |
Fraction |
---|---|---|
value |
Ninja Cream costs almost half the price of a spin, although the ice cream attachment is cheap if you have a KitchenAid blender. |
4.5/5 |
design |
Functional, but not a great thing. The mixing mechanism is powerful and the mini hot plate is a great addition. However, gate distributors can only handle small sprinkles. |
3.5/5 |
Performance |
Make creamy and soft service, but you have to grab it at the right point. The timer will help avoid excessive freezing. |
3.5/5 |
if
If you don’t buy it
Cuisinart Soft Service Ice Cream Manufacturer: Also Considered
How do I test Cuisinart soft service ice cream maker
I use the Cuisinart Soft Serve ice cream maker to prepare multiple recipes from the Cuisinart website, including soft ice cream and sorbet. I tested the hot plate with different types of chocolates and tried various sprinkles and candies in the topping dispenser.
For more details. look How we test, review and evaluate products in Techradar.
First reviewed February 2025