Didn't expect it to work- happily wrong.
I found this after googling "paleo ice cream" and bought it right away. It arrived, and I had already peeled frozen bananas waiting in the freezer. It came already assembled, and the only thing I had to do was plug it in. I read the instructions, and thawed my bananas for fifteen minutes. It does say in one area of the booklet to thaw for five minutes, but in a different area it states 15. Go for the 15. Five minutes would have resulted in ice chips, I feel. I dropped one banana in, and then a handful of chocolate chips, and then pushed another banana in, and out came amazing soft serve banana-chocolate chip ice cream, with no weird fillers, no weird chemicals, and no weird fake colors. I was shocked. You see these things on tv and don't actually expect them to work as described, but this one made ice cream like a champ. For what it's worth, the booklet that comes with the machine suggests over and over to use "cheetah spotted bananas" because they're sweeter, but I prefer a stronger banana flavor and less sweetness, so I was perfectly happy using fresh bananas. They don't affect the actually yonana consistency. Some notes. I had no issues with leaking, but I did make sure the leak stopping gasket was installed correctly, per instruction booklet. It wasn't hard. I had no issues with clean up. While your ice cream is sitting on the counter doing its thing, it takes a literal sixty seconds to pop the Yonana maker apart and rinse clean. For people who say a lot of yonana is left in the machine, I would concur, however, I took a spoon and easily scooped out the ice cream left in the machine and put it into my bowl. It was still the proper yonana consistency and taste. Just don't lick the blades with your tongue to get ALL the yonana out and you'll be okay. Some people complained it takes two bananas to make one serving, which is true, however, considering two bananas is only about 250 calories, that's not a bad deal I figured. If for some reason 250 calories of plain fruit isn't in your diet plan, you can freeze half. I tried it, and it makes ice cream that is scoopable, like a pint you would buy from the store. I did not find the machine unbearably noisy. It took me longer to decide how many chocolate chips to put into the machine then it actually took the machine to make the ice cream. The noise is no louder than a blender and is on for far less time. One last thing- when the yonana is coming out of the machine I found that far less is left in the machine if the bowl is shorter and flatter and turned as the yonana comes out. However, once you're done plunging it really is not a big deal to pop the blade housing off the machine and scoop out the "still inside the machine" yonana, in the event your bowl turning skills are lacking (as mine for sure were). I would recommend Yonanas to all my friends. They're always asking me to bring it over so they can push fruit and chocolate or peanut butter through. For the record, I do find that a small food processor and a blender make almost the same consistency, but not quite. We tried with a food processor and the blades are just too big to make a nice soft serve consistency. The Yoanana's blade are very tiny. With the blender it took forever having to shove the fruit back down into the blades. If you're paleo, or just don't want to eat ice cream with crazy amounts of sugar or weird stuff inside, buy this thing. Follow the instructions, mildly thaw your frozen fruit, and enjoy. Read more































