Now the one item you tend to see most kitchen cooks love to have and use is a Kitchen Aid mixer, and for good reason, they last a long time and do a wonderful job. If you are a gadgeteer like myself they also appear great for all their add on accessories. Even though I do love trying out new gadgets, I do try to be conscience of size and usefulness, as I don't want a lot of clutter on my counter nor am I one to pull out a gadget just to use it. I admit that I have quite a few gadgets hiding away in the pantry that haven't seen the light of day in quite a while. Sometimes though you find a recipe or get an idea to make something that just requires that special gadget that you haven't used in a while. Well I did that this past weekend with pretty excellent results. The item in question this week, the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker attachment...the challenge....a copy cat recipe for Wendy's Frosty....and the outcome...well, let's just say I was amazingly surprised.
I will start out saying that this is an attachment that I probably never would have bought, my only reason for having it is that when I bought my kitchen aid mixer, there was a deal that I got it for free with it. Who am I to pass up on a free kitchen gadget.
Now I can't take credit for the recipe, as this is not something that I would probably even remotely came up with, and whether they came up with it or not, this is where I got it from this Easy chocolate Ice Cream recipe. Although I was far from being able to add a full half gallon of milk to my Kitchen Aid attachment, it came it very good, although I did have to put it in the freezer to finish the process.
The Kitchen Aid ice cream maker is simply a mixing bowl that you freeze ahead of time (it says about 15 hours, I left it in a few days because I didn't get to trying this right away), and a special mixing attachment that is just like what you find in a standard ice cream mixer. So I proceeded to take my ingredients out and put them in the mixing bowl. My impatience got the better of me on this, because I assumed just to throw it all in there and mix it while it made it, of course that is because I was doing this from memory first and went back and later checked the recipe....oops. This lapse caused me to take the mixing paddle out and mix it up better in the frozen bowl.
According to most of the recipes that come with the Kitchen Aid they talk about 10-15 minutes for the ice cream to start to get near consistency, so at a half hour and it was just somewhat near consistency I was a bit disheartened. However half of it was about the right consistency, so to finish it off I put it into a container and tossed it into the freezer. The results later that night was frosty heaven. Amazingly it was so similar I was shocked. In hind site I think my results would have been better if I mixed up the ice cream batter, and put it in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes to get it near freezer ready.
As this is only about half about my ice cream recipe let me give some more info about the gadget that helped make this wonderful concoction. This ice cream maker is not too bad for those of us that would barely ever make our own ice cream. Although I admit my first attempt failed pretty miserably, my own fault I put the batter in much too warm. I think that for this to work best you probably should put your batter in after chilling it to the point where the start to get the first bit of ice crystals. Since you can't add more ice and make it chill longer, you need to plan ahead, and have it near freezing before you start the mixing, if you put them in even slightly warm, you can forget about ice cream, but you might have a nice shake.
The only other downside to this device is the size, with it's size custom recipes you find online or from a friend or where ever, will more than likely have to be adapted to fit into the bowl, as it's only capable of preparing around 2 quarts of ice cream, hence why I wasn't able to fit a half gallon of chocolate milk into my frosty mix, and even the amount I added, I ended up coming up over the edge a bit.
Where I think this little thing really excels at is cooking with kids, my 2 year old son was with me in the kitchen while I was trying this out and being able to see the ice cream mixing and start to thicken made him really feel apart of it. Almost too much to be honest, because when my wife got home that evening and we were telling her what we were going to have later, he told her he made the ice cream! Letting him have the credit though was worth it to see his face, although him knowing there was a lot more than the small cup we gave him wasn't all that great, because he definitely wanted more.
In review, I have a hard time really grading this item, for the normal price of $80 I'm not sure I could recommend it. Although some of the benefits of not having to deal with a mess of ice and rock salt is nice, especially when dealing with kids, and being able to see it as your treat starts the transformation to a frozen icy treat is also a plus. But when you can get an old school ice cream maker or a dedicated small one like the Cuisinart one for less, it makes this one a bit hard to swallow for the money. The only benefit to this one versus one like this Cuisinart Ice Cream maker is that when you are freezing this bowl you are still only storing your Kitchen Aid, not another full size gadget. So would I buy this outright at full price, probably not, if you caught it on sale or as a bonus when you buy your Kitchen Aid, it's not bad. Especially if you are only going to be making ice cream once or twice a year, but if you plan on making ice cream a lot, or in much greater quantities, I'd keep looking.
If you have tried something in the Kitchen Aid Ice cream maker or have your favorite recipe I'd love to hear it and hopefully try it out. Best of luck in your kitchen!
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