Hamilton Beach Electric Automatic Ice Cream Maker Frozen Yogurt Sorbet Custard 1 5 quart White 68880

The media could not be loaded. I made the mistake of not reading the directions first; Don't be me! Make sure you assemble and turn on before you add the batter. We have a subzero freezer and the batter instantly froze to the bowl. Then I couldn't seat the paddle and it wouldn't churn correctly. Crisis averted after much scraping with a bamboo spatula. Hoping I didn't destroy the bowl! Make sure you don't add more than 4 cups (32 ounces) by volume including add-ins. I made a huge mess. The machine is loud but I'm sure it's loud at the factory and ice shops too. I love that I can use whatever ingredients I want and not have to worry about added crap. I'm on a mission to use organic ingredients, no sugar and no artificial sweeteners. My lower carb recipe: 8 egg Yolk 2 cups heavy whipping cream 1 cup whole milk 45g local raw honey 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon salt 5g 80p vodka This round I added 1/4 unsweetened cocoa powder and 28g salted dark chocolate After extensive research I've found that sugar is a sweetener and it keeps the ice cream from freezing solid. I've learned .05% by volume of alcohol keeps the ice cream from freezing solid. I also added 5% by volume local raw honey so not safe for diabetics but half the carbs as store bought ice cream. Next round I'm going to forego the honey and use berries as my sweetener, so even less carbs. It did it's job and I'm looking forward to the next round knowing more of what to expect! Read more

This thing works maybe a little too well. I got it on the front porch at 1230 pm. It is now 730 pm and I have just made my first batch of ice cream. After seeing concerns from others who have used this type of ice cream maker...where to bowl has to freeze before using...I was concerned that I would have to wait until the next day to make the ice cream. As my grandson is here today I was really hoping to use the machine today. As soon as I got the ice cream maker, I washed the bowl and paddle and put the bowl in the back of the freezer right away. I had a bag of frozen blueberries so I put it the bowl thinking it would help freeze it. My freezer was set to the coldest level. I had already made the ice cream mix earlier in the day, but I moved the mix from the fridge to the freezer about an hour before starting to make the ice cream. About 6 and a half hours after receiving the product, I put the mix in the bowl and started her up. Within 3 minutes it went from slushy to not wanting to turn at all because the mix was already frozen. I added some left over cream and some whole milk and it started to churn long enough for my grandson to put some cookie dough and M and M's in the mix. My take away from this is that 1.) If you decide today you want to make ice cream at your house tomorrow, just order this with Prime. 2.) If you remove the bowl from the freezer and it doesn't slosh when you shake it then the liquid in side is probably cold enough. 3.) If you have your mix in the fridge for 3 hours or so then you likely don't need to put it in the freezer at all. Read more

It works quite well to freeze ice cream to a thick mushy state so the final freezing can be done in the refrigerator deep freezer section. My main complaint is how noisy it is. I put it in the room with my washer and dryer so I can close the door to make the noise tolerable. I don't understand why it has to be so loud. Even with nothing mounted, it is very noisy with the sound of gears. I thought the gears were plastic and should have very little noise. I don't know if I got one that is worse than normal or not. I see other people have complained about how noisy it is. I would order another one or a different brand if I knew it would be any quieter. At least the price is good. The price is the main reason I selected this brand. The freezing capability is adequate - not outstanding. But at least I don't have to deal with salt and ice to freeze ice cream. The capacity is only one liquid quart, but that is adequate to last a short while. I put too much liquid ice cream in the canister and it overflowed a little, but not badly. I underestimated how much it would expand when frozen. It was nearly double volume when frozen. I saved a Blue Bell Ice Cream container to have a place to store the ice cream. The recipe I used had too much sugar and slightly too much vanilla, but still tastes good. I like the open top for adding fruit. I added frozen peach slices broken into smaller pieces. I will keep experimenting with the recipe until I get a good balance of ingredients. Even this first recipe tastes so much better than the Breyer's, Dreyer's' and other brands I've purchased in the absence of Blue Bell Ice Cream. Blue Bell is still the best by far. I hope it returns on the grocery shelves soon and I won't need this Hamilton Beach Ice Cream Maker anymore. Of course, if I could find a recipe that mimicked Blue Bell Ice Cream, then I'd always use the Hamilton Beach Ice Cream Maker - noise or not. Read more