Soft-Serve Ice-Cream Makers

Soft-serve ice cream makers

If you prefer making soft-serve ice cream, a number of new novelty models are on the market. These tall ice cream makers look a lot like commercial soft-serve machines, with built-in containers for sprinkles and other mix-ins, cone holders and metal pull-down levers for dispensing ice cream. But while commercial soft-serve makers use powerful, quick-cooling compressors, machines for household use come with gel canisters that must be pre-frozen for at least 12 hours at 0 degrees Fahrenheit or below. Many home freezers don't get this cold, and even if you follow the freezing instructions to the letter, ice cream may come out runny. Several owners say that they pre-froze the canister far longer than 12 hours, but the ice cream never set up. What's more, these machines have a lot of nooks and crannies to clean.

The Cuisinart ICE-45 Mix It In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker (*Est. $110) receives middling reviews at Amazon.com. About half the owners who've posted reviews say that ice cream came out soupy. A number of owners say it's too tall to fit underneath their kitchen cabinets and too bulky to store easily. Even owners who used this machine successfully say it needs to run longer than the recommended 12 to 15 minutes to whip ice cream to the soft-serve stage.

Owners report many of the same problems with the Deni 5530 Automatic Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker (*Est. $55) ; no matter how long owners keep the gel canister in the freezer, the ingredients never thicken enough to be called ice cream. More than three-quarters of the owners posting reviews to Amazon.com report disappointment with this machine.