For me, ice cream is one of the most enjoyable consumables on earth so the thought of making ice cream at home gives me (the good kind of) shivers! In this Cuisinart ICE100BCU review, I look at what this high-end ice cream maker is capable of and put it through its paces.
ICE100BCU: What can it Make?
This beast can produce a wide range of frozen desserts, including ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, and sorbet.
It has a powerful built-in compressor, enabling it to churn out batch after batch of ice cream without the need to pre-freeze the bowl. This is a great feature for those who love to keep the ice cream flowing.
That means that can make multiple flavours in a row without having to wait for the bowl to freeze in between. You just need to get all of the ingredients sorted beforehand.
The main control of the Cuisinart ICE100BCU is its built-in touchscreen display. This makes it easy to change the time that you want to set the ice cream hardness level to.
It has three different settings for ice cream, gelato and sorbet. In addition, there are custom settings that allows you to adjust the sweetness, hardness, and churning time to your liking.
The display also shows you the remaining churning time and the temperature of the bowl, which is helpful for getting a perfect consistency. It also beeps when finished to alert you of the sweet treat being ready to eat.
Another great feature of the Cuisinart ICE100BCU is its large capacity. It has a 1.4 litre bowl, which is enough to make several servings of ice cream at once.
It also has a transparent lid, which allows you to see the churning process as it happens. The bowl is also removable, which makes it easy to clean and store.
The Ice Cream Making Process
The first batch that I made was vanilla custard and I only had semi-skimmed milk (rather than full-fat as per the ingredients). Despite that, it was a pretty simple process that (perhaps surprisingly) required heating the ingredients in a pan first.
After the initial cooking requirements, the mixture needs to be cooled. Then, it must be left in the fridge for at least 2 hours (preferably overnight). Once this is done, you are ready for the exciting part – the ice cream production in the machine!
Here’s the first batch being made:
There is a general guide for time required in the mixer for hardness: the longer it runs, the harder the resulting ice cream. I prefer my ice cream soft so go for the lower end of the churning time scale.
How Noisy is the ICE100BCU?
Despite many modern kitchen devices boasting of their quietness levels (such as dishwashers), the Cuisinart ICE100BCU ice cream maker is actually pretty darned noisy.
There is no getting around it, I’m afraid. This thing makes a loud, motorised noise as it churns and pushes the ice cream around the mixing bowl. The ice cream gets pretty thick toward the end of the cycle and it clearly needs quite a bit of power.
Fortunately, the process of churning and freezing takes less than an hour so you don’t have to put up with it for too long.
Sampling the Results
As they say, the proof is in the eating.
I can tell you that after going through the process, the eating is GOOOOOOD!
The vanilla custard ice cream is a fairly simple one to get started with. Apart from separating egg yolks from the whites, there is nothing too tricky about combining (whisking and folding in) the ingredients.
The recipe mix is best left in the fridge overnight (although a minimum of 2 hours is OK) before running it in the ICE100BCU. I thought that this was absolutely delicious and better than any that I have bought from the shops. Very creamy, even if substituting full-cream milk with semi-skimmed.
Next up it was time to make strawberry ice cream. For this recipe, real strawberries are used. It’s a bit ‘healthier’ than some of the other recipes because it also means using a bit less double cream (300 ml).
This one is simply delicious although it does require more preparation time than with the vanilla custard. The sliced strawberry recipe needs at least 2 hours in the fridge before adding it to the main recipe which also needs at least 2 hours in the fridge.
I also made gelato (plain vanilla) which is a personal favourite after several visits to Italy. For this, the machine uses a separate mixing wand to the ice-cream-making wand.
The results of the gelato were also pretty sensational. What’s more, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more recipes I have yet to attempt. I’ll keep updating this page with any developments and additional comments as and when they are deemed appropriate.
There is quite a decent output of ice cream produced by the make thanks to its large mixing bowl. It can be a bit tricky extracting the ice cream from the bowl and the mixing wand, though! No one wants to waste a drop of this delicious manna from heaven…
Overall, the Cuisinart ICE100BCU is a high-quality ice cream maker that is perfect for those who love to entertain or simply want to make their own frozen desserts at home.
The results speak for themselves, and I think that it makes it an excellent choice for anyone looking to get started with a simple-to-use ice cream-making setup.