Cuisinart Ice-100 Review

For the past 20 years I've made all my ice cream in a 2-quart Cuisinart ice cream machine with an insulated freezer bowl. This week I finally upgraded to an ice cream machine with a built in compressor, the Cuisinart Ice-100 ice cream and gelato maker. This is a brief review along with my experience so far.

Cuisinart 2-Quart Ice Cream Maker

Cuisinart's 2-quart ice cream maker is a fantastic basic ice cream maker, but the downside is that it comes with a barrel which you have to keep frozen. If you have a lot of freezer space, that's not a real issue. However, you still have to freeze the barrel overnight, which means you can only make one batch of ice cream every 24 hours. I wanted to make multiple flavors at a time, which meant I needed a model with a compressor.

Cuisinart Ice-100

After reading pros and cons of different models (including the the Whynter) I went with the Cuisinart Ice-100. At about $300, it's not the cheapest compressor model, but it's far from being the most expensive. It only makes 1 ½ quarts at a time rather than 2 quarts, but most of my batches are on the smaller size anyway and I like making multiple flavors rather than just one. For us, the 1 ½ quart size was a benefit. Most importantly, other reviewers said it makes great ice cream. At the end of the day, that's what counts.

Noisy

The Cuisinart Ice-100 is a sleek machine that you'll need space to store. It's 32 pounds and a little too big to keep permanently on the counter, plus it's fairly loud. I put it in a storage type room off my kitchen so I can close the door and let the ice cream churn. Or sometimes I put the whole machine in my office and close the door. So if you don't like noise, you might want to set it up in a different room. It's heavy, but not so heavy that you can't carry it around.

Not Many Parts

There aren't a lot of parts to this maker, thank goodness. There's the main body, a removable barrel, lid and two dashers. One dasher is for ice cream and the other is for gelato. I can see one of these easily getting lost, so I'm glad there are two and will have to let you know if the gelato dasher really makes a difference. They both have slightly different shapes. I'm just glad they sell replacement parts, which you can see here. If you manage to lose a paddle, you can order up a new one.

The lid is plastic and is liable to break, so be careful. If does have a little opening you can slide add-ins in during the last few minutes of churning. This is handy, although I usually stir the add-ins in while packing. It really depends on the flavor.

Easy to Set Up

Set up is easy. You basically plug it in, set the timer and hit go. You'll want to read the manual if you've never used an ice cream maker, but if you are upgrading from a barrel model, there's not much more to this one. It's fully automatic, and I like that it has a timer. One thing to note is that it shut down as soon as the timer ends, so you have to be ready for it, otherwise the ice cream will melt. I'm mentioning this because some models have a keep cold feature. Personally, I'm usually pacing and anxiously awaiting the ice cream so I wouldn't forget about it.

Minor Issues

Maybe I'll add more if they arise, but so far the only problem I ran into was that I when I put the barrel in for my second batch, it had some water on the outside. The water froze making it impossible to pull out, so I had to scoop the ice cream directly from the machine and let the outside of the barrel thaw before I could remove it. So if using an Ice-100, always make sure the barrel is dry. It says this right in the manual, but I missed this part and had to use the troubleshooting guide.

Pre-cooling Ice Cream Barrel

This model takes a little bit longer than the non-compressor model because you are starting at room temperature. It needs to freeze before it can do its job, so you are looking at 40 to 60 minutes for ice cream rather than 20 to 25 like of the frozen barrel type. But 20 extra minutes is worth it to not have to refreeze a barrel for 24 hours. Another tip I learned is that ice cream will come out smoother if you pre-cool the machine. This means you set it up, turn it on and let it go for 20 minutes before adding the ice cream base. I haven't actually tried this.

So far I'm extremely happy with the Cuisinart Ice-100 and have made quite a few different flavors in just a few days. It might be my imagination, but the ice creams seem to be coming out slightly fluffier or airer than in my older machine. I am mostly using my own tried and true recipes, but the machine comes with an instruction booklet that has what appear to be some top quality ice cream and gelato recipes. Below are links to a few favorites. The picture at the top is the Vanilla Gelato, a recipe I posted years ago. I haven't tried the Dairy Queen Copycat yet in the new machine.

• Dairy Queen Ice Cream Copycat
• Light Chocolate Malt Ice Cream
• Vanilla Gelato
• Peanut Butter Ice Cream