Americana EIM-1400R 1.5 Qt Freezer Bowl Automatic Easy Homemade Electric Ice Cream Maker, Ingredient Chute, On/Off Switch, No

It’s A Frosty Cup For Ice CreamJust got my ice cream maker and so far — having made mint ice cream and now lemon sherbet — I love it. It’s easy to set up, easy to use and not too, too loud. It is a bit noisy but you can leave in the kitchen after the dishes are done. When the sherbet is ready, I plan to make Mocha ice cream. 😉 I LOVE that I can make up my own flavors!Here are a couple of qualifiers.1. It does not freeze the ice cream/sherbet solid. Of course not. If you ever watched a video of how ice cream is made, you know that even the manufacturers hard-freeze the ice cream AFTER they make it. What the ice cream maker does is combine the cream, sugar and flavorings without ice crystals forming. If you just mixed those together and put them in the fridge, they would be icy when you to them out. But the churning process prevents that.2. You cannot leave the bucket in the freezer longer than 48 hours. And it take 24 hours to freeze. So the best way to use it is to plan to make several ice creams, one right after the other. What I’m doing is using it (the instructions say it takes 15-30 minutes but on videos most say for up to an hour), then washing it, DRYING IT (very important) and putting it back in the freezer while I prepare the next batch.3. You should pre-mix your ingredients. The shoot is only for adding things like chocolate chips or fruit slices when the mix is half-way done. Anyway, you want to make the sugar is mixed completely or you may end up with some parts too sweet and some not sweet enough. Also, this gives you chance to taste the mix (especially if you like to make up your own flavors, as I do).I don’t know how long it will last. But if it’s anything like those old Frosty Cups, we’re talking years. 😀

A wonderful machine, with some qualification…I confess I tried to buy a different machine by a very well-known kitchen appliance maker. In fact, I tried *two times* and had overlooked this little beauty because I was swayed by that well-known brand. The first maker from that well-known brand came in with the inside of the cylinder so badly dented into a pentagon shape instead of the circular inside one should expect, I shipped it back. After all, if you can’t get the lid on because it’s badly dented, what would you do with it otherwise? The second one arrived, and this time, it wasn’t dented on the inside of the cylinder with a pentagon. This one had a triangular shape inside–and the same problem existed: I was unable to get the lid on. I shipped it back.On my third try, I went for this little red beauty–Maxi-Matic. I have to say it’s downright cute, but cute will never be enough to sell something, or convince me it would be useful. This time I was pleasantly surprised!The first batch of ice cream didn’t impress me too much though. Ice crystals formed, leaving the ice cream a bit of a flatter taste than the rich, creamy ice cream I was looking for. A little bit of a switch in thinking and some scouting of the other recipes online instead of in the maker’s recipes solved the problem. Rich and creamy? Add a couple of eggs and voila! Rich and creamy! There’s one other thing I do before making the ice cream in the machine: I beat the eggs and sugar until it’s a lovely thick mix and then add the whipping cream and milk, beating the whole thing well. Then I put the bowl in the freezer for about 3 hours, and *then* use the cylinder from the freezer and put it together, pouring in the mixture to allow that to be finished in the machine. It takes me a few extra minutes plus the time in the freezer to make a marvelous ice cream that’s rich and *minus* the chemicals in storei-bought ice cream. For me? It’s worth the reasonable price and my health. I’m delighted with the machine.As for “easy to clean”? The *cylinder* is a breeze to clean. So is the paddle. The lid housing the motor? If you make too much ice cream in the machine and that excess gets between the lid and the motor, that’s a different story. For the life of me I can’t figure out to separate the two for cleaning that area! That’s the only reason the “easy to clean” has 4 stars instead of 5. Still, this is a delightful machine!

Does Not Reliably Make Ice Cream, Plus Cleaning Issues and Recipe IssuesThe media could not be loaded.

 If there was just one problem with this ice cream maker, I might have given it a pass. However, it seemed that pretty much every single aspect of this ice cream maker had serious flaws.First, the basic operation. You have to put the plastic-encased bowl into the freezer at least 24 hours ahead of time but it can’t stay there more than 48 hours. So you have to plan out every single time you want ice cream. If you accidentally forget the bowl in the freezer, it could crack and break, rendering the entire unit unusable. That is a fairly serious flaw in an ice cream maker.Then, the design of the plastic-around-metal canister is not sealed, meaning it’s fairly easy for water and/or ice cream mix to drip into the area in the inside. Now you either have water which can freeze and break the unit or old milk / sugar which can go sour and be nasty. There’s no way to get it out.Next, in our tests the ice cream maker didn’t even make ice cream. I would have been fine with a milkshake consistency. It didn’t even do that. It made cool ice milk. There was no real sign of thickening at all. It’s not like we live in the tropics, either. We have a thermometer in our freezer and it was set properly. We didn’t open the freezer AT ALL while the ice cream bowl was in there. It’s mid-winter in New England – our house is 68F. It’s not like the bowl somehow warmed up substantially while making the ice cream on our counter. It simply did not do its job.The recipes seem to have been mis-translated from a metric system. There are all sorts of near-impossible measurements in here like 1/5th of a cup or 1/4th of a tablespoon. These are simply not measurements most households have available. Standard recipes use measurements like 1/4th of a cup or 1 teaspoon. They even say 2/3rds of a tablespoon instead of 2 teaspoons. All of that lack of attention to detail makes me wonder if their recipes would even work properly if the unit worked properly.So sure you could use other internet recipes for making the ice cream. And you could be meticulously careful about never getting any liquid near the seams in the pieces so you didn’t end up with ice cream mix down within the bowl. And you could always carefully plan ahead exactly 24-48 hours in the future to know when you want to make ice cream. But in the end of the unit itself does not reliably function to make ice cream, I’m not sure what the point is.We’ve used many, many other ice cream makers in the past. We only needed a new one because we gave our current one to my son. I thought I’d try this Americana due to its good reviews. Maybe the manufacturer’s quality control is so iffy that some units work and others don’t – but even if this did work, the many other flaws would have me unhappy with this compared with the other options out there.Not recommended.

Don’t kids learn basic science anymore?Or maybe they should learn food science, because it’s not rocket science to understand how ice cream is made. But if you don’t know this information, you’re not going to have ice cream. You’re going to have wet slush. Search on “ice cream not freezing homemade” and “the science of making homemade ice cream” BEFORE buying an ice cream maker.1. The freezer bowl is only as frozen as the freezer it’s in. If your freezer isn’t cold enough, it doesn’t matter how long you freeze the bowl (and the manual warns that the plastic might crack after 48 hours).2. Ice cream needs fat or else it will form ice crystals. The fat traps air to give ice cream its creamy consistency. For your first batch, experiment with heavy cream ice cream. Save the low fat and no dairy stuff for later. Search on “mason jar ice cream”. This won’t be the best ice cream recipe, but is easy to make so good for practice (and kids and Dads).3. Uncooked ice cream recipes sometimes call for RAW egg yolks. Read up on how to handle eggs safely, and learn the “cooked custard” ice cream recipes.4. Blend the ice cream mix before freezing (and cool it to refrigerator temperature before freezing). As said, ice cream uses air to give it is creamy consistency. While the rotating paddle adds air, a hand immersion blender does a much better job. Cooling the mix before freezing reduces ice crystals (and you don’t need to cool it if you’re using a cream-based recipe, such as “mason jar ice cream”.5. The ice cream on the edges and bottom of the bowl hardens first. In theory, the paddle is there to make sure the temperature of the ice cream is distributed evenly, so that the inner portion isn’t liquid, and the outer isn’t hard. In practice, your ice cream won’t end up like store-bought, unless you continue to freeze it.As for the rating, this ice cream maker is a good first step for those who aren’t sure if they want an expensive one. Despite calling themselves “maker”, ice cream has some prep before churning begins. This ice cream maker is noisy and I’m not confident how long the plastic paddle will last. But, for now, we’ve made some sugar-free ice cream we’re happy with (search on “banana ice cream”).

Makes a nice small amount of ice creamAre use this to make low carb ice cream, and it worked just fine.