Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me begin by saying I have always been a fan of Cuisinart. But they really missed the ice cream boat on this one! I received this for Christmas this year, despite reading some of the negative reviews here on Amazon. I assured myself that I would love this product, so read the review with this in mind. I truly wanted to love this ice cream maker. I make ice cream several times a month, using my tried and true Cuisinart Ice Cream maker that requires freezing of the insert. It has always worked perfectly, but I wanted to take it to the next level and make ice cream the commercial way. I was hoping for a very smooth end product, and didn't mind the noise. I made one batch of ice cream (attempted really) in this machine, and realized immediately that this was not a well designed piece of equipment. The base is heavy and sturdy, and seemed well made. But the arm that drives the churn is plastic!! And there is no way to secure the churning device so that it stays in the bowl. Once the ice cream base begins to harden and the work of the churn blade increases, the plastic arm just can't meet the demand, and when the arm jumps up, the churn stops going. So now here we are, the refrigerator unit is freezing away, but no churning! Almost immediately, the ice cream at the perimeter of the bowl freezes so hard that it can't be churned, leaving the middle of the bowl a soupy mess. And that folks, is all she wrote! I tried following the advice of others who had this same problem. A heavy book, a 5 pound hand weight, even me just standing there holding down the arm (can you say boring!!) didn't help. The churning blade always stopped. So do yourself a favor. Stick with the fabulous and elegantly simple design of the freezer bowl Cuisinart ice cream maker. Or plan on spending a lot of money on a professional ice cream machine. This half hearted attempt by Cuisinart to meet me half way between simple and crazy expensive just left me cold. Oh, not my ice cream, just me!!!