So it’s the summer holidays again. You know you will have company over. You have the meals all planned out, but you are stumped by the volume of desserts you want to serve.
Here comes the Nostalgia Electrics ICMP-400 4-Quart Electric Ice Cream Maker to your rescue.
Let’s dive right in.
Features
This electric Ice Cream Maker is a beast! It’s capable of producing a whole 4 quarts. Yes you read that right. 4 QUARTS!! That’s enough to feed up to 6 people with healthy portions of creamy dessert. Many of the newer ice cream makers produce 1 to 2 pints of dessert. Many of them also have to be pre-frozen i.e. have a drum/bowl placed in the freezer for up to 24 hours. This leaves no chance for spontaneous ice cream preparation and eating.
How does this work
The ice cream is made in this gadget by preparing your preferred ice cream base in the canister and covering the appliance. Place the unit near an area with good drainage e.g. the kitchen sink. Add salt and ice in the plastic bucket, then adding in the canister, turn it on and place the whole kit in a cool area for between 20 and 35 minutes? Right? Ermmm, not really.
For BEST results and creamiest desserts, use LAYERS of ice then rock salt. Rock salt can be bought in any local hardware store, or from Amazon and the crushed ice? Simply use the ice dispenser on your fridge. Pour in 2 inches of crushed ice with 4 to 5 tablespoons of rock salt in layers all the way to the top of the bucket and you cover the canister with ice. This ensures maximum and even distribution of the cooling effect, and lets you get a dessert that is consistently creamy all the way through.
Be wary of using too much rock salt though, as too much will cause ice crystals to form in the ice cream, affecting the creamy consistency. Getting this wrong can make the difference between you getting ice cream or frozen ‘soup’.
From setup of the layers of ice and rock salt in the bucket to enjoying your sweet dessert takes between 20 and 35 minutes.
After this time, you will have a dessert with creamy soft serve consistency. For firmer ice cream, chuck the produce into your freezer for 2 hours. Transfer the ice cream from the aluminum container to a large plastic bowl with a lid and place in the freezer.
Uses
This gizmo can make a range of frozen delights, ranging from sorbets to ice cream to yoghurt
Tips for Best use
One tip is to place the aluminum canister, in which the ice cream is produced, in the freezer for a few hours before. This helps to make the dessert a tad faster.
When you prepare your ice cream base, add ice and rock salt as I described earlier and place the mixture in the aluminum container in the ice pail. Flick on the switch and you are in business. Leave it for up to 20 minutes, but keep an ear out. As the mixture firms up, the motor turning the paddles starts to turn slower and slower and will eventually stop. This can be used as an indicator that your ice cream is ready.
I find that using whipping cream in place of half and half gave the final product a creamier and thicker ice cream.
Design
The dasher and bucket are made of a high grade plastic. This replaces older models that were made of wood and held together by brass bands, these were usually no good as constant exposure to the salt and water mixture corroded the brass and the bucket ultimately fell apart.
The canister for the ice and rock salt mixture is made of good quality aluminum.
User Manual
This appliance comes with an instruction manual. Take a few minutes to read it and know exactly what you expect to do. While the included recipe book isn’t as comprehensive as I would like, there are many recipes available on the internet for you to experiment with.
For a gadget where you don’t need to pre-freeze the bowl, produces ice cream in quantities to feed up to 8 people with healthy portions, all in 20 – 30 minutes, you can’t go WRONG!
Size
This is a large-ish ice cream maker with a 4 quart bowl. Its measurements are 15 x 17 x 16 inches, with a 60Hz, 50 watts motor that’s strong enough to churn the mixture to ice cream consistency. It has a removable aluminum freezer bowl, paddles for turning the dessert, a canister cover.
Looking at this gadget will remind some older users of the retro machines that you had to crank for hours, just to get a tiny portion of ice cream. Not with the Nostalgia Electrics ice cream maker. You get the classic good looks of the machine and a whopping 4 quart capacity.
Pricing
The Nostalgia Electrics ice cream maker is available for an affordable price and FREE shipping from Amazon.com, and that is the best deal I found online.
