Ninja CREAMi Breeze Ice Cream & Frozen Dessert Maker

goldfinches

The Tesco perfectly imperfect 1kg bags of fruit which have strawberries, blackberries, red and black currants in them are a really nice combination I think and a bag cost £3.45 on the 8th of this month, which is still quite good value. I definitely prefer them to the more expensive mixtures which tend to contain raspberries. Anyway, I'm mentioning them because I usually have 100g with greek style yoghurt for breakfast and it's delicious so I think they'd be worth trying as an ice cream flavour. 

Rosa_Damascena

Ok, my first attempt with my new ice-cream maker was an unmitigated failure. 

The mixture - clotted cream, raspberries, bananas, and sugar - is delicious, but it froze in contact with the bowl so the paddle never go a chance to get going. Its now one solid frozen lump, and realistically I need to find a rescue tactic and action it fast to avoid a complete waste of ingredients. Said tactic will involve my stick blender and liquid glucose.

Given the sunken costs involved, its the most expensive ice-cream I'll have bought. If you have any tips on using this darned machine @pumpkin89 , I am listening.

pumpkin89

@Rosa_Damascena so sorry to hear that!  It does sound like it should be delicious.

I'm not sure exactly what method you used, but a few things to check:
1.  The paddle needs to be going before you tip the ingredients in (through the hole in the lid), so it is instantly mixing to minimise freezing to the bowl
2.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, if you are using frozen ingredients you need to semi-thaw them first - you need quite a free flowing liquid base at the start to give the paddle a chance
3.  If it still freezes to the bowl, I find scraping it off the sides with a wooden spoon and adding a bit more liquid (milk/ cream/ yogurt) can be enough to get it going

Rosa_Damascena

pumpkin89 said:

@Rosa_Damascena so sorry to hear that!  It does sound like it should be delicious.

I'm not sure exactly what method you used, but a few things to check:
1.  The paddle needs to be going before you tip the ingredients in (through the hole in the lid), so it is instantly mixing to minimise freezing to the bowl
2.  Perhaps counter-intuitively, if you are using frozen ingredients you need to semi-thaw them first - you need quite a free flowing liquid base at the start to give the paddle a chance
3.  If it still freezes to the bowl, I find scraping it off the sides with a wooden spoon and adding a bit more liquid (milk/ cream/ yogurt) can be enough to get it going

I think this is key. I used clotted cream thinking that the low water content would minimise crystal formation and it was pretty thick. Although the fruit was well macerated, getting it through the hole would have been like a camel through the eye of a needle! So it froze on contact with the bowl, which remained frozen for hours btw. Final product tastes great but it was not made in the ice cream maker.

Will wait a while until I liberate a bit more freezer space and then try again.

Rosa_Damascena

Well I tried again last night and am very pleased with the results! I made a coffee ice-cream using double cream cream, frozen banana, instant coffee and a small amount of liquid glucose. I cannot believe how easy it was when I actually followed the instructions.

CapricornLass

I have an ice-cream maker too - I'm allergic to nuts and coconut, and there aren't many ice-creams that can guarantee their product is free of both.  I use it to make ice-creams for myself and OH, and sorbets and soya ice-cream for DD1 who is allergic to dairy.  

I paid the extra money to get one that does the freezing for you, rather than pre-freezing a bowl in the freezer first.  The pre-frozen bowl meant that I had to plan making ice-cream instead of just doing it spur-of-the-moment, and I never had freezer space to keep the bowl in there permanently on the off-chance.  It's been worth the money.

Rosa_Damascena

CapricornLass said:

I have an ice-cream maker too - I'm allergic to nuts and coconut, and there aren't many ice-creams that can guarantee their product is free of both.  I use it to make ice-creams for myself and OH, and sorbets and soya ice-cream for DD1 who is allergic to dairy.  

I paid the extra money to get one that does the freezing for you, rather than pre-freezing a bowl in the freezer first.  The pre-frozen bowl meant that I had to plan making ice-cream instead of just doing it spur-of-the-moment, and I never had freezer space to keep the bowl in there permanently on the off-chance.  It's been worth the money.

What have you got, and what capacity is it? 

Rosa_Damascena

Right, I have liberated more freezer space and have now set my sights on making a good vanilla (no eggs). Any recipe recommendations? I'm a bit reluctant to dilute the cream with milk but I do want a soft and creamy result.

goldfinches

I can recommend the vanilla ice cream part of this recipe which comes out a beautifully creamy and quite soft texture which I hope would be good for your piece of kit Ice Cream Sandwich Recipe with Blackberry | olivemagazine
N.B. the blackberry ripple is well worth making but do avoid the biscuits which no-one enjoyed.

The other no egg ice cream recipe I can recommend is this one Best No Churn Lemon Ice Cream Recipe - How to Make Lemon Ice Cream (food52.com) which I think you could customise by omitting the lemon zest and juice and adding in vanilla bean paste/extract or seeds scraped from a pod to taste before you freeze the mixture. Again this recipe doesn't freeze solid which is why I thought you might find it useful.

Both the above mix condensed milk and cream which worked out very well for me and the sweetness of the condensed milk means you might not need any additional sugar too.

Then there is this recipe from Erin Jeanne McDowell which I haven't tried but her recipes are always trustworthy and she gives some interesting extra flavour possibilities as well No-Churn Vanilla Ice Cream (& Fruity Floats) Recipe on Food52 
Lastly Nigella Lawson has lots of no churn ice cream recipes on her website Recipe Search Results | Nigella's Recipes | Nigella Lawson and you might find them useful, even though they are all different flavours, to give you a base recipe to start from. 

Right that's enough research for one day, hope you find one or more of these delicious and happy tasting.   

Rosa_Damascena

Thanks @goldfinches