Yogurt Ice Cream Makers for Your Kitchen

Ice cream is a wonderful treat, especially in the summer. Who doesn't love that frothy icy feeling of sugary heaven floating in your mouth and cooling down your heated body when the sun is burning outside? Everybody loves it. Of course, most commercially available ice sticks are only available with additional chemical sweeteners and different additions to extend their shelf-life, which is of course detrimental to your health and the health of your kids, to say the least. And you should try giving your children more natural treats with less chemicals if you want them to stay healthy for a long time.

One of the most important things to teach them is that natural is always best, and making your own yogurt ice cream at home is a great way of not only teaching them how to make icy snacks but also teaching them that natural ingredients give you the best flavor in every possible type of food. That's not only true for ice cream but for everything! And if you've never eaten real "fresh" icy delight made with fresh fruit on the same day, you'll be astonished at how good this tastes compared to the chemical industrial alternatives.

Having an ice cream maker at home is a great way of being able to make your own ice or sorbet cream whenever the desire to do so strikes you, and you can have a delicious cup of icy flavor anytime you want, even in the middle of the night. An ice cream maker produces ice-cream by slowly freezing a liquid preparation you put in it by slowly stirring it all the way until it's frozen so that it doesn't freeze in a solid block.

Once your icy treat is freezing cold you could of course put it in a box and into the freezer. At these temperatures, homemade ice cream is just as easy to conserve as any other type of food and can be left for weeks or even a month in your freezer. It is of course necessary to point out that mostly even your ice-cream will taste better if you eat it immediately instead of freezing it, and if you have the possibility of doing so you should prefer it to conserving your icy flavorful treat in the freezer for a longer period of time.

Ice Cream Makers For the Kitchen and the Campsite

My all time favorite frozen dessert maker is the Cuisinart ICE-20. It is an 1-1/2 quart automatic ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet maker. It costs $50, which sets it about at the middle price range for frozen dessert makers. Given my experiences with it, and all the other positive reviews on Amazon.com and other places, it is definitely an excellent choice. I did have to seek out some recipes -- the ones the ICE-20 comes with are so-so at best. So far, the best ice cream recipe book I've found is the one put out by Ben and Jerry (no big surprise there), titled "Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book".

By far the highest rated ice cream maker on amazon, the Cuisinart ICE-20 comes in both white and red. It can make 1 1/2 quarts of any frozen dessert. The instructions say it makes ice cream in 20 minutes, but that's never happened for me. There may be some crystals forming in 20 minutes, but if you don't want cream soup by the time its in the dish, give it 30 minutes.

Be careful about overfilling the container -- as the mixture gets firmer, it will start to creep up the sides of the bowl, and if you put in too much (or put in what the recipe suggests, then drop in a cup of nuts, for example) you could walk into your kitchen to see sticky goo making its way down the outside of your machine. Another thing to be careful about is the noise. The ICE-20 is too loud to make a batch during a formal dinner, or after everyone's gone to sleep. Mine is nearly as loud as our vacuum.

If you tend to overindulge and need to make more than 1.5 quarts at a time consider getting a second bowl. Homemade desserts are a wonderful thing (no preservatives!), but it is a wee bit time consuming. Making a double batch is much more efficient. Having a second bowl also makes it possible to make two flavors, which is great if you are having a party or bringing a dessert to a party. Get a few of the reusable plastic containers for $1 or so each at the grocery store and keep them on hand if you need a quick gift.

I also highly recommend you find room in your freezer to keep the bowl. We've found making ice cream is a spontaneous, spur of the moment sort of thing. Waiting six hours for the bowl to freeze is not spontaneous. You also need a second bowl because you can really only make one batch per "chill".

Ice Cream Makers for Camping

One ice cream maker that requires no electricity is the Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker, available at Walmart for $38. To use this soccer-ball shaped frozen dessert maker, fill one compartment with cream, sugar and flavoring, and the other with rock salt and ice. Then roll it around for 30 minutes (an excellent way to wear out children... just don't let them kick it or abuse it too badly... ) and voila: ice cream.

LL Bean has a very similar camping frozen dessert maker that comes in several different colors. If you want to make ice cream but have no access to refrigerator, or ice, (like while you're setting up camp on a mountainside) either the LL Bean or the Play and Freeze ice cream makers are for you.