Cuisinart ICE-21RP1 1.5-Quart Frozen Yogurt Ice Cream Maker - Double Insulated Freezer Bowl, No Ice Needed, Makes Homemade Sorbet & Frozen Treats in 20 Minutes (Red) - Perfect for Summer Parties, Family Desserts & Healthy Snacks

Bought the Model 21 in time for homemade peach ice cream. Had gone back and forth whether to purchase a newer, more expensive version but after reading someone else’s recommendation that the older, simpler model worked just fine, decided to follow their advice and after having made nine batches of various flavors, agree that the “21” couldn’t be any better. No bells and whistles are really necessary other than the on/off switch, and it’s overly pricey to upgrade. The machine does make some noise, but not like a revved-up Harley or anything. I continue putzing around in the kitchen while the ice cream churns, and the high-pitched hum is not overly annoying. The slightly smaller capacity (1-1/2 qt) is advantageous since we can polish off a batch and go on to the next “experiment” without much delay. Finally, the smaller canister is easier to fit in a small refrigerator-freezer for the necessary pre-chilling. I haven’t found a second canister to be necessary for a small family, but if you have the freezer space and need to make larger quantities more often, it could be the ticket.This little gadget has been fun to use and it’s so easy, almost foolproof, to have great-tasting ice cream without the mess of an old-fashioned salt-and-ice freezer. After trying one of the Cuisinarts I ordered another as a gift, along with a 1-1/2 qt oblong storage container (have tried both Tovolo and Sumo—they seem practically identical). After the initial experiments with various “rich” recipes and flavors, we will probably try some of the lower cal versions such as sorbets and ices, but for now, it’s full bore with the creamy goodness. Life is now measured “before homemade ice cream” and after!Observations/methodology: Have tried various recipes—with eggs, cooked custard; with eggs, uncooked; no eggs, adding some instant vanilla pudding powder for extra thickness and body, and using fruits--peaches, cherries, strawberries, as well as butter pecan. (B.C. was hands-down fave!—toasted the chopped nuts in the oven first, with melted butter, a little sugar, and a sprinkling of kosher salt. In the custard, used dark brown sugar, maple syrup and Jack Daniels for flavoring—yummilicious!) Finally decided to stick with the cooked custard approach, adding a small amount of vanilla bean instant pudding powder, say 1-2 TB, to the cooled custard just prior to freezing. (I feel uneasy about using raw, uncooked eggs.) Have had excellent results using a Thermapen to measure the temp, whisking constantly while cooking in a heavy pot. It doesn’t take long to come to temp and thicken, but does need to be cooled prior to freezing, so if in a hurry you may prefer the easy-no-eggs-instant pudding type of recipe, readily available online.Not one batch so far has been a “failure”—in fact, they’re all so good that we’ve become addicted and eat ice cream three times a day. It should come with a warning label! We prefer a rich version, with a combination of heavy cream, evaporated milk, condensed milk and regular milk for a vanilla base resulting in that “from my childhood” taste. It can be modified with add-ins as you please. Be sure to write down what you do as you go, in case tweaking is needed next time or in case you pronounce the latest batch a sure winner. Have plenty of tasting spoons at the ready while churning, and several rubber spatulas will come in handy.As many have noted, it’s key to have the canister frozen rock-solid prior to churning. We keep it in the freezer between uses and even put the plastic shell (aka “lid”) in there while prepping the custard. There’s no actual lid as you might imagine. I wring out a wet dish towel and lay it on top across the open hole, and put some ice cubes atop that to help insulate. May not be necessary, but every bit helps.So far the “21” has worked great and we make a batch every other day. The most challenging part is transferring the just-frozen custard to a storage container for additional hardening. Take out the paddle first and scrape it off (another opportunity for tasting). The filled canister is heavy and to hold it with one hand while scraping out the soft ice cream is a bit unwieldy. A very firm plastic spatula works best (rather than a flexible one) to get all the ice cream out. Never use metal, anywhere, anytime! Wash and dry the canister when empty and return to your freezer pronto. You WILL want more ice cream soon and it’ll be ready to go, so keep a spot empty for it. It’ll be worth it. (I scream for green beans? Not so much….)Some have complained about the freezer not working for long, but being a new owner, I can’t say.. It seems like if you treat the parts gently it would last “forever,” but maybe that’s just like the honeymoon phase with a new lover. Time will tell but we’re very happy for now—even obsessed.Be cautious of OVER-filling the container which can cause an overflow mess since the mixture expands while freezing. Err on being conservative with the amount of custard mix. I use 2 eggs per 3 to 3-1/2 cups of liquid per batch and add the mixings the last few minutes to help ensure they don’t add too much volume. Keep an eye on it from time to time during the freezing process to make sure it isn’t about to overflow. You can always remove some of the mixture if it seems necessary. In the case of the toasted buttered pecans, I folded most of them into the mixture AFTER pouring it into the storage container because instructions say not to add anything larger than a chocolate chip, and I wanted some to be larger chunks. This delayed-addition technique works well for other fixings, too. On one hand, adding pureed fruits at the outset is good, for overall flavor intensity, but adding extra cut-up fruit later may be to your liking. Be aware that too-large chunks will likely get icy in the long run and be hard to scoop up, so there’s a fine line.The other “misteake” was making a double portion of custard in order to have back-to-back batches of half vanilla, intending to make another flavor with the remaining half of the mixture. Apparently the second half of the custard wasn’t chilled enough to overcome the freezing canister having gotten warmer on the first run. Although most batches froze in 15 to 30 minutes max, after a longer time it was obvious this batch refused to set up, so I returned the chilled custard in a bowl in the refrigerator, returned the canister to the freezer and decided to try again later. About five hours worked. Lesson learned—be patient. OK to double the batch, but chill it all thoroughly prior to churning.If pondering whether to get a countertop ice cream freezer, go for it. It’s fun and easy to use. You’ll be a proud as a brand-new parent after you make the first batch.I have more of a problem with the manual than the machine, because it wasn't the troubleshooting help it could have been. What did help was this page's Question and Answer section, with all the user feedback!So my first batch didn't turn out so well. I used half and half, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract. I'd have used regular cream, but I can't find any pure heavy cream in my area that isn't full of preservatives and additives containing free glutamic acid and other scary stuff.I froze the bowl for 14 hours. The gel was frozen solid. The manual said that the bowl should be in the freezer for 16-24 hours, but it also said that when you didn't hear the liquid gel swishing, it was sufficiently frozen. So I thought optimistically, "Oh! That must mean my freezer's just a super-freezer and got it cold enough in record time! Yay!" Um, no.I have learned that just because the gel is frozen, that doesn't mean its temperature is as low as it can go - or should go. As I discovered, it needs to go a lot lower than "frozen solid" to work with this machine. Since it probably freezes around 32 degrees F (0 Celsius), the manual probably shouldn't say to use the lack of swishing sound as an indicator to readiness. (It's less misleading to say that hearing liquid is a definite sign it's NOT ready.)The actual problem I encountered in my unsuccessful first try was that the mix stopped moving. Parts of it stayed on top of the paddle in a semi-frozen slushy state and parts of it remained on the sides, still unfrozen, and that was the stuff that wouldn't freeze up at all. Since I was confident my bowl was cold enough (uh, yeah!) and the manual cautioned not to stick things in the bowl while the machine was on, I kept turning it off and moving the solid stuff to the sides, then turning it back on. Rather ungainly way to get what turned out to be a milkshake that, when frozen, turned into ice crystals.The next time, I did three things differently, and got very nice, acceptably smooth ice cream without omnipresent ice crystals.First, I used our non-self-defrosting freezer to chill the gel bowl. Freezers that are set to self defrost work by warming up every so often to control frost. Stand-alone freezers like chest freezers or upright freezers come in two styles: Self-defrosting and non-self-defrosting. We use the latter type, the one that has to be manually defrosted, because colder freezers are necessary for long-term storage of meat. A freezer that doesn't self-defrost keeps its cold temperature steady, with the exception of when the freezer is opened or loses power. So I stuck the bowl in that one at the almost-coldest setting, 7 out of 8.Second, I chilled the mixture overnight in the fridge. Not sure that did anything much to improve things, because it seemed about the same amount of cold as my first try.The last thing I did differently was that while the ice cream machine was working, when parts of the mixture started freezing up on top, I used a rubber spatula to recirculate them. I kept using the spatula pretty vigorously the entire churning time. That worked well and was kinda fun.I was left with something that was definitely ice cream. Not slushy, not prone to melting at all. The ice cream didn't melt instantly and the inner bowl was coated with a thin, hard-frozen layer of ice cream in places that stayed there. I rushed to get the ice cream into freezer containers, but I don't think it was necessary this time. Whatever was in that bowl stayed frozen for a long, long time. Fifteen minutes later, I could still eat it frozen with a wooden spoon.So I came away the wiser and with better ice cream. Cold is key. I don't think you need to use a non-self-defrosting freezer like I did, necessarily, but if you chill it the full 24 hours at the coldest setting and it still isn't cold enough, it's possible your self-defrosting freezer isn't doing the job.I was left with two more tips to offer anyone who might be interested. One, if the bowl is that cold, don't wash it right away, or it will freeze some of the washing water on it in an almost invisible layer. Two, I swear that bowl seemed cold enough to possibly make another batch. Had I had one ready, I'd have tried it. If I try it, I'll report back.Hope that helps someone else who encounters the same problem of partially frozen slushy-milkshake ice cream. It's most likely because the bowl isn't cold enough.UPDATE 10/23/2014: Well, it's the next day, and I am thrilled to report I got extra mileage out of the ice cream maker. I froze the bowl at the almost-coldest setting in my non-self-defrosting freezer for about 20 hours. I had a large batch of butterscotch ice cream mix ready and a small batch of coffee ice cream mix ready, my own recipes. I first ran the machine with the large batch for about 18 minutes. (I learned something important here: The larger batches circulate MUCH better than the smaller ones. This one hardly needed to be coaxed with the spatula. On the downside, there was so much aeration that I had to scoop out some at the top to prevent its warming up because it was leaving the icy part of the bowl.) Then I scooped most of the ice cream into a container and popped it in the freezer. I left a bit of the ice cream on the paddle, since the flavors weren't bad to mix with the next batch and I wanted to preserve any coldness I could. I did not wash the bowl out for the same reason, and also because I didn't want it warmed by delays or water. So I then reassembled everything and started the machine and added the small batch of coffee custard mix. It took about 12 minutes to freeze this mini-batch into gorgeous ice cream. Didn't even start to melt. So I basically got 1 1/2 bowls out of one freezer day. Yay! Hopefully I didn't do anything to risk the ice cream maker's breaking - I was pretty careful to mix in the frozen part with the non-frozen part together.I learned something else here, too, that many of you must already know - the more fat, the more like store-bought ice cream. Half and half alone without cream or butter added wasn't quite smooth enough, though it's darn good. I thought it would work because some recipes in the book call for 2 cups milk and 2 cups cream, and it did make nice ice cream, but it occurred to me that I don't know if half & half is half cream, half milk by weight or by volume. Anyone know?UPDATE 9/23/2021: It's years later and it's still working. Haven't used it tons, but somewhat, with a variety of dairy and nondairy ice creams. Pretty pleased with this machine holding up and upgraded it two stars.I have used this machine only once to make vegan vanilla oat milk maple syrup ice cream, with a cashew base. So, I confess, I am on a frolic of my own. It worked. I left the machine on for 19 minutes; it was thick but not quite soft serve. The insert that came with the machine recommends 20 to 30 minutes, so next time I will try 25 minutes. After some freezing, the ice cream was fine.I have decided, as a behaviorally trained psychologist, that I should not eat ice cream that often, even vegan ice cream, so the behavior cost of cooling the mixture for two hours and finding space in my freezer to store the drum for 24 hours is actually a positive. The advantage of an expensive machine that makes it easy to make ice cream with no planning is probably not a long-term advantage; better to spend the money on a good blender and make a healthy, low-fat smoothie for a spur of the moment snack. Save the ice cream for a less frequent treat.Most of the bloggers seem to recommend the two quart model, but it has quite a few negative reviews regarding icy product sticking to the sides of the drum and just plain ineffective cooling. Apparently a quality control problem. As a single person, I can live with 1 1/2 quart capacity, and few recipes I have seen actually make use of the additional capacity.Next, I will try pistachio ice cream, and another with a coconut milk base. Stay tuned.In summary, this machine did not rock my world, but, for the money, is a nice addition to have for an occasional relatively healthy treat.Para los que se quejan de que no sirve, es porque no saben leer instrucciones. El balde debe dejarse congelar mínimo un dia completo y además la mezcla debe estar semicongelada, si la metes a temperatura ambiente tu helado no se logrará. El protector se raya muy fácil, cuidado al lavarlo, sólo con esponja suaveGreat little machine. I did A LOT of research before purchasing an ice cream maker. This one is voted #1 time and time again. It works fast and well.Tip: I emailed the company to find out the difference between ICE-21 and ICE-21C. They told me there is no difference at all. The C stands for Canadian is all. It’s like half the price of the ICE-21!Tip: Add 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum and 1 tbs of glycerin and you wil have the perfect scoopable batch. It’ll turn out like a brick otherwise. It took me many batches to get to the perfect ratio. Oh, and I make it sugar free and custard based, so these 2 ingredients are essentialMy daughter made ice cream with this machine the first time last week. Delicious ice cream was made with it. If there is one negative thing about it is that the bowl needs to be in the freezer for many hours before use. That means I have to eat all the ice cream that were made from the previous batch in order to free up room for the next batch. ... hmmm is that a negative thing?????Cumple totalmente su función...Había leído reseñas sobre el hecho de no congelaba la mezcla lo suficiente, pero no es así, más bien es vital seguir instrucciones del fabricante..Guardo mi bowl en el congelador así que esta siempre listo.. en cuanto lo recibas recomiendo dejarlo ahí de 2 a 3 días, es solo la 1a vez, cual es la prisa... si lo almacenas ahí, en adelante tendras un recipiente listo para trabajar eficazmente SIEMPRE..Procura también que la mezcla de helado este fría, yo generalmente uso leche y nata de montar que siempre estan refrigerados así que tengo helado en unos cuantos minutos..Si fueras a hacer mantecado, es decir con adición de huevos o helado espesado con féculas simplemente haz tu mezcla y refrigera hasta que este bien frío (lo bueno lleva su tiempo, pero créeme, valdrá la pena la espera, no hay helado mas exquisito)..El punto que queda es suave, si quisieras un helado todavía mas firme(para hacer bolas con scoop) vacía a un recipiente metálico y conserva unas horas en congelación..Como ultima adición, el fabricante recomienda 20 minutos para que tu helado esté listo, no te excedas mucho más de este tiempo oara lograr mas firmeza, pues el bowl comienza a descongelar y suavizará tu helado... solo sigue instrucciones y no tendrás problema alguno, bowl bien congelado y mezcla fría...Excelente compra!!This is an AC motor driven product. So make sure you buy a converter which steps down the Hz from 60Hz to 50Hz also.In all probability there will be no such converter easily available. So the next best thing to do is get a 220v to 100v converter - not 110v. Lowering the voltage compensates for the Hz.If you use a 110v converter the motor overheats and shuts down in 10 mins.