Cuisinart ICE-45P1 Mix Serve 1.5-Quart Soft Service Ice Cream Maker Review
The Cuisinart ICE-45P1 Mix Serve 1.5-Quart Soft Service Ice Cream Maker is a lovely little item that allows you to make soft-serve-style ice cream without using pre-mixed chemicals! That’s certainly a big selling point, and it’s something that would make us want to buy this appliance. Read on to find out more!
The Good
The Utility
The great thing about this Cuisinart ice cream maker is the fact that it has so many different uses! There are a nearly endless number of different frozen dessert recipes out there, and this machine is wonderful for handling any number of them! It can mix up soft-serve style ice cream, as well as sherbet and other treats in no time.
Soft-serve
The Cuisinart ICE-45P1 Mix Serve 1.5-Quart Soft Service Ice Cream Maker dispenses soft-serve-style ice cream without you having to use any kind of pre-mixed ingredients. You can add cream, sugar, and all the other ingredients of ice cream into the machine, and the machine will process them into an ice cream that’s similar in texture to soft-serve. This is a wonderful way to create that style of dessert without spending a fortune on pre-made mixes which have all sorts of things in them.
Mix-in Dispensers
This machine has a row of three dispensers on the side of the machine that is used for adding mix-ins to your ice cream while it’s being dispensed! You need only pull on the little lever, and the mix-ins will be automatically filtered into the dispensing ice cream. How handy!
The Bad
The Aesthetic
The Cuisinart ICE-45P1 Mix Serve 1.5-Quart Soft Service Ice Cream Maker works wonderfully, but it has the aesthetic of a children’s toy. That’s not really something that you want for an item that will be in your kitchen, making ice cream for you and your family. We would prefer to have a machine with a slightly more refined aesthetic.
The Novelty Factor
This machine does seem really wonderful to be used for the first time or the first few times, but after a little while, a number of reviewers report that the novelty value of the machine wears off. They find this to be particularly frustrating, and we understand that. Having an appliance that becomes dull must be very annoying indeed.
Mixing Bowl Must Be Frozen
This is the crux of the problem with this machine. It doesn’t have a condenser, so the mixing bowl of the machine must be frozen before the ice cream can be made. This is no great hardship, but it does mean that you couldn’t make ice cream on a whim. This could be limiting and understandable frustrating for some users.
The Verdict
Cuisinart ICE-45P1 Mix Serve 1.5-Quart Soft Service Ice Cream Maker review: Overall, we would certainly consider buying this machine. While it might not be the kind of thing that we would want in our kitchen for years and years, it would be perfectly good in the short term. We might buy it for a landmark birthday or small party, simply as a sweet thing for people to use at the party.
That novelty is certainly worth the price of admission, though we aren’t sure how long it might last. We would suggest considering how often you would be willing to do the small acts of setup and working from there.