The Cuisinart Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker review

The Cuisinart Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker has been designed to create and dispense soft serve ice cream with topping dispensers to create a full ‘ice cream factory’ experience. This is one of several ice cream makers that Cuisinart produce, but the only one that directly produces the soft serve variety.

It includes three dispensers for different toppings, a holder for an ice cream cone and a heated plate with a small pan for warming sauces. There are a number of recipes included for ice cream, including dairy free options and sorbet.

This product is one of a number of soft serve ice cream makers on the market and has a price tag at the lower end of the spectrum.

Testing the Cuisinart Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker

My 11-year old daughter was keen to have an ice cream maker and this one particularly appealed to her because of the way the ice cream was served and the toppings – it reminded her of the ice cream factories in play centres and restaurants. I thought it would be a good entertaining option especially when she had friends round because it looked easy to use and they could just serve themselves.

When it arrived I realised how large it was – much taller than I thought and far too tall to fit inside any of my cupboards. It was extremely easy to assemble, with very few movable parts and simple instructions. We decided to test it with the vanilla ice cream recipe provided.

The bowl within the machine lifts out very easily and then needs placing in the freezer for at least 24 hours and it needs to be upright. We are lucky enough to have a chest freezer in our garage, but would have struggled for enough freezer space without this, as it would have been difficult to fit within the drawers of our fridge freezer.

The next day we made the vanilla ice cream mix from the recipe, which was very simple and placed it in the fridge as per the instructions. After 6 hours we put the frozen bowl into the machine and then added the ice cream mix, then added the toppings to the dispensers ready for serving. It takes approx. 25 minutes of churning to get the ice cream to the right consistency.

The opening where you pour the mixture makes a handy viewing space to check when the consistency is right. We then started to serve the ice cream, whilst it is still churning, into the cone. It drips a little at first, but not massively, and then the ice cream is served in a long ribbon, just like the ice cream van. Once the cone is full, the level goes back up and then you can add the toppings. This isn’t ideal as the they shoot everywhere, but there will always be some spillage with ice cream toppings. We chose chopped nuts, sprinkles and chocolate balls. All of these fed through the dispenser without a problem. We had caramel sauce in the pan on the heat plate, but the heat plate is not powerful enough to warm anything through. The heat plate will barely keep warm a sauce that has already been warmed, so doesn’t really add anything.

The recipe provided is for 4 to 6 servings, but after the first one the mixture started to get so frozen that the churner was struggling to turn in the bowl, was making strange noises and wouldn’t dispense, we had to turn it off manually (which is not ideal and we shouldn’t do) to get another 2 cones of ice cream from it. After that we had to turn it off as the texture of the ice cream was too dense for the churner to work at all.

The ice cream had a really lovely creamy and smooth texture and we all enjoyed it very much, but the problems with the churning meant that we couldn’t go back for seconds.

Final verdict

Although the ice cream tasted lovely and we enjoyed the fun elements of the topping dispensers, we won’t be using this again. The churner isn’t strong enough to keep churning when the ice cream mixture starts to freeze and this results in half of the mixture having to remain in the bowl and allowed to melt. The cleaning of the machine afterwards is very messy, fiddly and time consuming. If the churner was more substantial enabling it to dispense all of the mixture then I would have been much happier and much more open to using it again, plus the heated plate doesn’t really add anything.

Lorna White is the Senior Digital Writer for Mother&Baby. After running the Yours magazine website, specialising in content about caring for kids and grandchildren, Lorna brought her expertise to Mother&Baby in 2020. She has a keen interest in a range of topics from potty training and nutrition to baby names and early development and has a wide range of experienced medical experts and professionals at her fingertips. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her two young sisters, dog walking and enjoying the outdoors with her family.