Anyone got an ice-cream maker?

[PamT]

My DH bought me an ice cream maker for christmas (could have been worse - a friend got an iron! - and I had been wanting one anyway). I'm a bit disappointed though at my results so far. Its a pain having to freeze the bowl overnight as I never have the room in my freezer and I'm no good at forward planning. Then I find that the ice cream doesn't really set hard enough so I end up putting it back in the freezer but have to get it out again before too long otherwise it sets too hard. So I can only make as much as we can eat in one go and have to time it to be just right.

My only success was a very alcoholic 'Snowball' ice cream made with loads of advocaat which couldn't set rock hard even if it wanted to with all that spirit in.

Sorry. I'm not going to be insirational either. I've had an ice cream maker for 4 years and used it twice, once to make icecream & once to make sorbet. The sorbet was fine but the ice cream was not as good as Tescos. It's far easier to pop down to the supermarket.
As for breadmakers a friend proudly produced her own bread but it was more like a cake. Is that true for all machines?

I bought one two weeks ago!
I have used it EVERY NIGHT! It's a magimix glage or something or other.It was bout £40 from argos. I could have got one in Tesco for £20 but for once in my life decided to go for the dearer option in the hope it would produce better ice cream as I had heard various people say they were not impressed by their ice cream maker.
I bought it to treat myself in my current war of the bulge.
Each night I tip in a tub of mullerlight and churn it for just five or ten minutes and it makes the most delicious ice creamy/frozen yogurty stuff which is not too fattening.
Tips which have worked for me:
Keep the bowl in the freezer if you possiblt can- it needs to be really well frozen for it to work.
Chill the ingredients well.
Make only small quantities.
Forget about recipies. Mush some fruit into some cream ( single is fine) decide whether you want to risk tooth decay or cancer, and add sugar or sweetener to taste accordingly , chill the mix then pour it in.

Lollypop, have you seen the bread machine thread on the Food topic? Everybody loves them. Mine is generally very good but I'm having trouble with the loaves not rising too well at the moment, I bought some more yeast today, but that's not too good either. Perhaps the element is failing through overuse or maybe I should buy some fresh flour. I use it for pizza dough and jam making too. But that's all on another thread.

Sounds like nobody is very impressed with their ice cream maker so far. I've used mine about 4 or 5 times but only been successful twice. Must dig it out again for the warmer weather or DH will sulk. I suppose I ought to make him use it instead.

I love the results, but often just forget/ can't be bothered. For dd's I often chuck in a carton of ready made organic choc. custard and greek yoghurt...they love it, and I know the ingredients are OK - it just seems really lazy, so I rarely admit it! the ingredients need to be really cold to work successfully. We now have a bigger freezer, so the bowl can live in there permanently, and I WILL use it more now! I've a friend who has the stand alone type (c. £250!), which is brilliant, as the bowl does not need to be frozen.

I know this is digressing but it's quite easy to make ice-cream without an ice-cream maker. I just mix things into whipped double cream (eg crushed maltesers or rhubarb crumble) and freeze it. Some recipes suggest stirring halfway through the freezing but I never do and it still tastes good, though the texture is slightly different.
Quite fancied one of those really expensive jobbies but ended up getting a KitchenAid instead, which I use a lot.

What's a Kitchen Aid?

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Our 8 year old wanted an ice cream maker for hisw birthday. Rather than spend £20.00 on a children's version we spent £40.00 on the adult magimix version. I could not see my son, or any child, happily spending 20 minutes hand churning the ice cream, as the children's version instructed. Excitement would have given way to boredom.

We have used the magimax once, and the resulting chocolage sorbet was hoovered up by my two sons as soon as it was ready. Must use it again. I blame the weather. It's not ice cream weather right now. We need a heatwave!

Aaah, so an icecream maker is like a juicer then in that you get it, use it once and keep it in a cupboard for the next 10 years?

It would seem so. I got a food processor when we were first engaged (long time ago). I generally use a hand blender (much less washing up) so when I finally got the FP out of the cupboard last year I found that it was terminally ill and started pouring smelly smoke out everywhere. It went straight in the dustbin. I do like gadgets but they all take up too much space. Sandwich toaster, slow cooker, coffee maker etc. We threw the deep fat fryer out because we decided it was too easy to eat unhealthily and it was a pig to clean out. I like the look of the George Foreman grills that have recently come out - do they create a lot of smoke or cooking smells?

Bloss I got a Kitchen aid earlier this year and it is FANTASTIC! Ridiculously expensive but I was fortunate to get it "free" with my Aga.It is a rare thing which combines aesthetics and function so well.
If you have the money lying in an account somewhere, buy yourself one.
"wealth unused might as well not exist" - heard this last week.

Bloss - go and get a KitchenAid RIGHT NOW! I really like baking and making puddings and ice cream, all of which used to involve loads of boring whisking, beating, creaming etc etc. They are expensive, but we got ours as a joint birthday present from MIL, and it gets used every weekend, and I've even been known to come home from work & knock up a quick Madeira, as it were. My dp also uses the dough hook to make bread and panettone. If you send off the guarantee to the makers you get a free cookbook (worth about £20 the lady in John Lewis told me)
It's turned baking into a doddle. I also reasoned that I'd save money by NOT buying an ice-cream maker if I got it. Skewed logic, but as I said earlier, the recipes I use don't need the ice-cream maker.
Oh, and they come in lovely colours, and look great on the kitchen worktop. (Nigella's got one too)

Agree on the KitchenAid Bloss. If you make lots of bread, cakes and puddings they are fantastically useful. But I hate to think how much they cost in Oz (around £240 here). I remember that Dualit toasters there are well over A$500.....

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