I purchased this product about 2 years ago and i have put it to a lot of use, especially in the summer. It is by far the easiest ice cream make I have ever used. There is no ice and salt mixture so, no mess. Instead, there's a container that has some sort of liquid gel inside. You freeze the container for 24-48 hours before making ice cream. This chills/freezes your ice cream mixture while the plastic blade part spins around inside and churns the ice cream. Its super quick. You can have soft serve ice cream in about 20-25 minutes. I start the machine when we sit down to dinner and we have dessert at exactly the right time. I leave the container in the freezer all the time so we can have home made ice cream whenever we want. It gets a lot of use in the summer months. The only negative is that it is a bit noisy. Performance Best ice cream maker I have used by far! Durability Ive had my machine for over 2 years and have used it probably 25+ times with no limitations Ease of Cleaning ice cream container is not dishwasher safe and has to be hand washed. The other parts are top rack safe. Capacity quart and a half is the perfect amount Design Comes in various colors (mine's red) and is designed to add additional ingredients like candy or nuts during the freezing process. I've swirled raspberry and caramel sauce in at the very end.

yosoycharly

Corinna, ME

My friends brought this to my house for a party and thought it was the cat's meow. I wasn't impressed at all. I guess if you just hate rock salt and having to have all of that on hand it may be for you. Performance Part of the compartment needs to "get cold" in the freezer and it needs to get REALLY cold! If you are having friends over and throw it in the freezer for awhile it will not be cold enough. It almost needs to have a permanent spot in your freezer during the warm summer months if you plan on using it at a moment's notice. Ease of Use IF it is cold enough, it will do its job giving you nice rock salt free ice cream in a couple of hours. Capacity It says 1.5 quarts on the box, but that is not much if you have a crowd coming. It's a lot of work for only 1.5 quarts. Design It does what it is designed to do. I would rather have ice and rock salt if it meant not having to store a compartment in my freezer and also having more than 1.5 quarts of ice cream!

Marathon36

USA

We purchased this ice cream maker to make ice cream with our kids. If you are looking to make ice cream every once and awhile and don't want to spend a lot of money than this would be a good ice cream maker for you. However, if you are looking to make ice cream often I would purchase something more durable. The price point of this about average and is good for the average family. Overall, it is a decent ice cream maker for beginners. Performance It gets the job done, however I find it awhile to actually get the ice cream made. I think the center that goes into the freezer easily gets warm. Durability Everything is cheap plastic. You have to be careful not to break the plastic that goes around the outside of the ice cream maker. Ease of Use This is a very easy machine to use and would suggest it for any ice cream maker beginners. It has simple instructions and just an on/off switch. Ease of Cleaning One of the perks of this machine is the easiness of cleaning the product. Everything easily snaps in and out and allows for a quick clean up . Mild soap and water does the trick. Capacity This only allows for a small amount of ice cream. Barely enough I would say for the average four person family. Design It is a bit bulky for the amount of ice cream it makes, it takes up a lot of kitchen counter space.

StevenOx

USA

I remember helping the 'adults' turn the hand crank, the metallic bucket submerged in ice and salt, during summer holidays - just to get fresh ice cream. Luckily those days are gone as we now can get homemade vanilla ice cream for our baked blueberry pastries with a much easier machine. The Cuisinart 1.5Q is small and simple - not great for large batches but certainly fun for small gatherings. There's a recipe book to try various flavors, or you can wing it. Simply load the ingredients and lock it into the base - it's electric and needs to be near a plug. Turn it on and about a half hour after you start you'll have fresh ice cream. I like to put the finished product in the freezer (you can use the machine's canister for storage) after it's ready for extra flavor mesh/hardening but it won't get rock hard, more between soft serve and hard. It's used a few times a year and hasn't posed any issues in 5 years now. Fairly easy to clean (handwash) and condensed enough to store. Overall great buy.

KFBurke

USA

These fine ice cream machines really blend the creamiest homemade treats you could imagine. Absolutely delicious, and such an authentic flavor to the batches. Performance The machine performs with great precision and always mixes great batches of the finest homemade ice cream and yogurt I've had. Really churns and operates with the greatest performance and produces high quality ice cream. Durability Very durable. We've had ours for almost 2 years now and it really rumbles through the dairy concoctions quite well still. Outside is still in tip-top shape as well, no cracks or faulty assembly. Ease of Use Really easy to use, our toddler likes to throw in her own batches sometimes and even she can operate everything with minimal supervision. Everything is laid out very well and makes operation very simple. Ease of Cleaning Easy to clean, the sections are quite capacious and yet so smoothly and well put together cleaning is always a quick job. Capacity Very large capacity, well always make at least a gallon at a time and it fits in there very well. No problems. Design Really great design, has tremendous aesthetic value, fits well with other appliances.

vmartin5748

USA

The Cuisinart Frozen Yogurt Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker was brought for the family as a gift and we hardly buy any supermarket ice creams since it arrived. I haven't tried the sorbet making method of this Cuisinart product but I make a few batches of ice cream every week. The fun part is making the different types of ice creams, with this ice cream maker I can make a range of tasty ice creams without having to spend so much money on expensive brands, I have made dark chocolate, chocolate mint, rocky road, Oreo cookies and crème, plain vanilla, cherry and heaps more of the families favourites. It's a great device for me as I know what ingredients are going in so I am always away of the calorie amount in each of my batches of ice cream. It doesn't take that long for the ice cream recipe to firm up into a lovely consistent soft serve quality ice cream, not runny at all. It's a great product for summer and saves you money in the long run. I highly recommend it.

bunneh

USA

My husband and I received the Cuisinart 1.5 Quart Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker as a wedding present (we had registered for it). We were pretty excited because we love homemade ice cream - it is one of our favorite desserts. We were not disappointed in this ice cream maker at all. We use it pretty frequently. It makes delicious ice cream. We have not used it to make frozen yogurt or sorbet, so I cannot speak to whether or not it makes those well or not. Performance This works great! I love it! Durability This has lasted our entire marriage so far (so about two and a half years). Ease of Use This is pretty simple to use, especially if you read the directions in the manual that comes with it. Ease of Cleaning It can be slightly tricky to take apart and clean, but it is no different than your average mixer or blender. There are small parts and little nooks and crannies that can be difficult to get really clean if you are not careful. Capacity I love ice cream, so this is not as big as I would like it to be. I could eat this all of the time!

scifigal2k

USA

My kids love ice cream, so for Christmas last year I purchased this ice cream makers, the Cuisinart 1.5 Quart Automatic Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream and Sorbet Maker. Everyone in my family absolutely loves it! It is so much fun having the freedom to create whatever flavor you want! Two nights a week at my house is ice cream night, on these nights the kids pick out a flavor that they want to try. Before dinner we start the machine and after dinner our ice cream dessert is ready to go! It only takes a half hour to become ice cream, so having a meal during this wait time is a great idea! I would recommend the Cuisinart Ice Cream maker to anyone who's wanting to make their own ice cream. Durability I have had this for 7 months now and have never had a problem with it! Capacity 1.5 Quarts doesn't make a ton of ice cream if your'e making it for a whole family, but Cuisinart does make a larger version of this same ice cream maker! Design It is a tad bulky, so finding storage space may be difficult. But the overall look of this ice cream maker is great!

jennyk12932

USA

We love making our own ice cream. I got this when I was in college but honestly never used it. This summer I thought it would be fun to make ice cream with my kids (partly because we had too much milk). It was a great experience and the kids loved watching the ice cream maker churn. One thing I learned the first time though was to mix the cream well or it will clump up into chunks of just cream. Performance It makes great ice cream. I don't usually follow the recipe and it still turns out. Durability We haven't had any problems and we have been making a lot of ice cream lately. Ease of Use It is really easy to use, but you do have to plan a few hours ahead so you can freeze the inner chamber. Ease of Cleaning Really easy to clean. I just wipe everything off with soap and water. Capacity It doesn't make enough ice cream for a large party or multiple families but it makes enough for a family of 4. In someways I like the quantity because then we don't overeat. Design The only thing I would change is to put a cover over the whole thing. The whole in the top is a little too attractive to young children who are watching the ice cream be made.

Moabgohan

USA

I am a full-time RV'er, living in my motor home 24/7. My refrigerator/freezer is large, for an RV, it is a side by side unit. But being large for an RV is still small compared to a house sized unit. My freezer has 4 shelves that are each only 9" x 8" x 8". Enough space to store wrapped frozen meats and bags of vegetables that I need, but not enough space to store containers of ice cream. Both my husband and myself love ice cream so I decided I would buy an electric ice cream maker so that we could make enough ice cream to eat one night and store the small amount left for the next night. I looked online and saw this Cuisinart 1.5 qt. ice cream maker and thought it would be perfect for us. When it arrived and I unpacked it, I then discovered that to my disappointment, I would not be able to use it. Unfortunately the bowl needs to be frozen ahead of time so that when the machine mixes and scrapes the ice cream mix in it, it will freeze. I was crushed. I just had no room in the freezer to put the bowl. I took it to my daughter and gave it to her. I rated a "9" overall because we were able to make ice cream at her house for me to review it's use. The Cuisinart worked great once the bowl was frozen. We simply added our ice cream mix that we made from a recipe in the manual to the frozen bowl, placed the bowl into the machine and turned it on. About 20 minutes later we had a little over a quart of ice cream. Not quite enough for 4 of us, but a great excuse to make two batches! Using this ice cream maker was very easy, there was really no guesswork and, when we were done, clean up was very easy. We simply washed the bowl with soap and water and wiped down the surface of the machine with a damp sponge. I didn't get to keep this ice cream maker, but still was able to use it and enjoy ice cream from it. Have since gone back online and found another machine that isn't as easy to operate, but doesn't need to use freezer space to make the ice cream.

rvgypsyjj

USA