Almond milk ice cream recipe Cuisinart

The is the first ice cream maker I ever bought and the one I started my business with. It comes with an impressive 2 quart removable bowl and makes excellent ice cream that is extremely smooth, dense, and creamy. Let’s give it a go.

This review will cover:

1. amazon’s ice cream machines best sellers list
2. the formation of ice crystals
3. the impressive 2 quart freezer bowl
4. setting your freezer’s temperature
5. the dasher
6. the freezing time
7. the extraction time
8. the static freezing stage
9. cleaning
10. the noise level
11. the quality of the ice cream
12. final thoughts

1. A best seller?

It doesn’t always follow that a best selling machine is a quality one but I do think it is useful to look at what other ice cream enthusiasts are up to when deciding which ice cream machine to invest in.

At the time of writing, the is number 1 in amazon’s ice cream machines best sellers list.

Click here to see amazon’s ice cream makers top sellers list.

At the time of writing, the following are the top 10 best selling ice cream machines on amazon.com:

1. Cuisinart ICE 30BC Pure Indulgence 2-Quart Automatic Frozen Yogurt, Sorbet, and Ice Cream Maker
   

2. The formation of ice crystals

When making ice cream, the two salient points you should always consider are flavour and texture; the best ice creams in the world are bursting with flavour and have a smooth and creamy texture. Smooth and creamy texture is determined to a large extent by the size of the ice crystals that develop during the freezing stage: small ice crystals contribute significantly to smooth and creamy texture, whilst large ice crystals produce ice cream that is coarse (Goff and Hartel (2013)).

Freezing is done in two stages : 1. dynamic freezing where the ice cream mix is frozen in a machine to incorporate air and to limit the size of the ice crystals that form; and 2. static freezing where the ice cream is hardened in a freezer. Both the dynamic and static freezing stages have a significant effect on ice crystal size.

So because small ice crystals contribute significantly to the development of smooth and creamy texture, we will be looking at how effective the features on the Cuisinart ICE-30 Ice Cream Maker are at promoting the formation of small ice crystals. These will include the freezer bowl, the dasher, the freezing time, and the extraction time. Let’s start with the freezer bowl.
3. The impressive 2 quart freezer bowl

The Cuisinart ICE-30 comes with an impressive 2 quart removable bowl that allows you to churn a maximum of 1.5 quarts of ice cream at a time. Of all the domestic machines I’ve tried, only the Lello Musso Pola 5030 Desert Maker and the Cuisinart ICE 30BC come with a large 2 quart bowl. Well done Cuisinart.

The 2 quart bowl is fairly large and does take up a lot of space in your freezer. It’s a good idea to check that your freezer compartment is big enough to accommodate the bowl before investing in the Cuisinart ICE-30: the bowl measures 7-1/2″ x 7-1/2″ x 6-1/2″.

Unlike the Cuisinart ICE-100, whose in-built compressor means that it’s good to go as soon as it’s switched on, you have to freeze the bowl on the ICE-30 before you can churn a batch of ice cream.

Cuisinart states that the bowl be frozen for at least 12 hours but I recommend leaving the bowl in the freezer overnight to ensure that it is fully frozen.

A good way of checking whether the bowl has been properly frozen is to shake it. If you can hear a gushing noise, it means that the freezing gel in the bowl (this is what acts as the refrigerant) isn’t fully frozen. If this is the case, you need to put the bowl back in your freezer.

It’s important not to churn a batch of ice cream if your bowl isn’t fully frozen: your ice cream is likely to turn out course and wet if you churn a batch when the bowl hasn’t been sufficiently frozen. If you’ve frozen your bowl overnight and it is still makes the gushing noise after you shake it, it’s probably because the temperature in your freezer is too high and needs to be turned down.

When you freeze your bowl, it’s a good idea to cover the top with cling film and place it in a plastic bag. This helps to prevent water vapour in your freezer from freezing to the inside of the bowl and then melting into your ice cream mix.

It’s very important to get your freezer down to as low a temperature as it will go. This is because the colder you can get your freezer, the colder it will get your bowl, and the faster the Cuisinart ICE-30 will freeze the ice cream. Quicker freezing of the ice cream in the machine will reduce residence time and improve ice crystal distribution (Russell and others 1999).

Residence time is the time a mix spends in the machine and has a pronounced effect on ice crystal size. To obtain the smallest ice crystals it is necessary to have the shortest residence time possible (Goff and Hartel (2013)).