Last month, Newsweek ran a piece on Six of the Most Fattening Ice Cream Flavors. Having used the Cuisinart ICE-20 for two weeks now, I don’t think the extra ingredients used to flavor the ice cream matter as much as the basic ingredients in the ice cream itself. Out of the box, the Cuisinart ice cream maker comes with a basic instruction book and a few recipes. I’ve tried the vanilla ice cream, lime sherbet, orange sherbet and pineapple sherbet recipes. I’ve also improvised and made banana frozen yogurt.

In general, the texture of the desserts is a bit better when freshly made. After I freeze it, the desserts get a bit too hard. Also, I’ve been substituting half and half as well as non-fat milk in place of the heavy cream and whole milk combination. So, my desserts end up not as creamy as the store bought favorites. I think I will have to test a batch one of these days with just non-fat milk and no cream to see how bad (or good) non-fat ice cream really tastes. I haven’t tried any of the premium ice cream recipes that require numerous eggs and egg yolks. A little too frightening.

Two issues. The booklet says to place the freezer bowl in the freezer for 6 hours to 22 hours. For my first batch, I was a bit too eager and shaded towards the 6 hour mark. Even though the bowl was completely frozen when I started, it defrosted much too fast and I ended with a cold, creamy soup. After that, I left the bowl in the freezer for 24 hours each time and haven’t had a repeat of that initial experience since. Also, I find that the recipes generally produce more liquids than can fit into the bowl. So, I’ve been scaling down to about 2 cups of liquids and that has worked out much better. Of course, if you’ve seen Super Size Me and heard the commentary about the health problems experienced by the founders of Baskin-Robbins and Ben and Jerry’s, you might avoid ice cream altogether (or not).