Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

(The video shows the Cuisinart ICE-21 making ice cream and frozen yogurt at 15, 20 and 25 minute intervals. Note that the sound is not as loud as it seems on the video and that these recipes were very cold before putting them in the machine. The peach ice cream had no recipe [just playing around with ingredients], but the lemon frozen yogurt came from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams book. Also, the tub was frozen below 0 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours) After trying out 3 of the most popular ice cream makers, I highly recommend purchasing the Cuisinart ICE-21, which has a plastic body and has a suggested retail of $60. Despite it's lower price and less fancy body, it blows the other units away! Below I compare it to the Cuisinart ICE-30BC, which has the stainless steel body and retails for $90, and the Kitchenaid Ice Cream Attachment which retails for $80 (obviously they are all cheaper on Amazon). To start off, don't even bother with the Kitchenaid - its tub doesn't freeze hard enough to effectively freeze your ice cream and you will end up with ice cream soup no matter how cold you get the tub. Also, the dasher stops churning the ice cream after about 15 minutes and the ice cream attaches to the dasher and spins around the bowl in one big chunk. It's also extremely overpriced at $80 for just the tub. Now, for the Cuisinart units. The plastic unit (Cuisinart ICE-21) is far superior to the stainless steel unit (Cuisinart ICE-30BC), which is unexpected since it is the lower priced model. The stainless steel unit is much louder, takes way longer, produces inferior ice cream, and leaves a thick layer of hardened (wasted) cream on the bottom and sides. Let me explain. First, both of the Cuisinart units are loud, but the stainless unit is so much louder and high-pitched and irritating, while the plastic unit has a tolerable hum. You can carry on a conversation with the plastic unit nearby, but not the stainless one. Second, the stainless unit is slower. It takes 50 minutes to get 1 quart of ice cream hard, while the plastic unit only takes 25 minutes for 1 quart (both using very, very cold ice cream mix). The difference is in the dasher. The plastic unit has an improved, patented dasher that churns the cream much faster. Since Cuisinart makes both of these machines, I can't figure out why they wouldn't put the fast dasher in the stainless unit as well, but they didn't. Third, ice cream from the plastic unit is also superior. The plastic unit makes ice cream that is much more frozen and solid, while the stainless unit just doesn't seem to have the same freezing power. I also discovered that when the ice cream is churned for a long time (as it has to be in the stainless unit), the fat in the cream starts to get weird and you end up with ice cream that leaves a fatty film on the roof of your mouth and your spoon. Ick. Almost like whipping cream too long and making butter. However, the plastic unit is fast enough that this problem is avoided. Fourth, the stainless unit's dasher isn't big enough to make contact with the walls of the tub and leaves quite a gap where ice cream gets lodged and eventually hardens into a solid, thick layer. Not only is this a waste of ice cream, but it also contributes to the stainless unit's slower freeze times by essentially creating a barrier between the churning cream and the frozen tub wall. As I'm sure you're catching on, you might guess that the plastic unit doesn't have this problem, and you'd be right! In the video it looks like there is ice cream coated on the wall of the tub, but it's actually really easy to scrape off. The kind of build up I'm talking about has to be chiseled off with a sharp plastic tool (no metal tools so as to not damage the tub's delicate membrane) and is just one more downside of using the stainless steel model. The stainless steel unit may be appealing because it has a capacity of 2 quarts, while the plastic unit advertises a 1 1/2 quart capacity. However, in my experience neither Cuisinart unit is capable of freezing the quantity advertised. Using the recipes included with each machine produced so much ice cream that they both overflowed out the top before even being done freezing. While the cream in the lower part of the tub continued to freeze and churn, the overflow at the top just sat there and eventually melted back into liquid. This was pretty disappointing to me b/c making ice cream requires some labor, and I wanted to be able to make at least 2 quarts at a time, and the tub can only be used once and then has to be put back in the freezer to get cold again. The solution for me was to buy a second freezing tub for the plastic unit and make two back to back quarts. The first batch takes 25 minutes, then you just swap out the tub and make the next batch in another 25 minutes. Overall it takes about 50 minutes and you actually get 2 quarts of very frozen ice cream, while using the stainless unit takes 50 minutes for just one batch and you have to deal with the above mentioned downsides. Plus, you can use the second tub to make a different kind of ice cream if you want. Amazingly, the cost of the stainless unit by itself (retail $90) is the same as the plastic unit PLUS a spare freezing tub (retail $60+$30). To me that's a much better deal! So in summary, I highly recommend the Cuisinart ICE-21. It's superior in every way and costs less too!