Last Minute Gifts of Homemade Ice Cream

You might be thinking "Ice cream in December?" but remember that we have Sisters and Brothers worldwide and some of you are approaching your summers.  Plus as many of my friends and family say "When is not a good time for ice cream?"  With this idea village Ice Cream Magic you should be able to have ice cream without the need to make a large quality of it.  The commercials strong suggest this is a product for children so we'll keep that in mind while we test it out.  So let's see if this might be a quick last minute gift you could pick up.

The shaker itself comes in three "flavors" or colors and I was sent the strawberry one so I'll just have to make chocolate ice cream inside, right?  This reminded me a lot of a large set of ice cream bowls and spoons were got from my hubby's maternal grandparents many years ago -- in fact, the spoons look identical don't you think?

The four page booklet included tells me that I need measuring spoons and 1/4 measuring cup, salt, crunches ice, and then whatever ingredients you need for any of the 11 recipes included.  You also need some stamina because you will be shaking this for 3+ minutes.  Because the timing is so important I couldn't take photos of the steps just the item itself and the final results of one of the ice creams.

We made two types -- one Peppermint and two Chocolate.  Here's what we discovered with this.

1) It gets tiring shaking this thing because it took about 4 minutes for us to achieve something resembling ice cream for half of the mixture.  Frankly I'm hard pressed think of kids doing this as vigorously as needed for that amount of time.

2) Make sure everything is on tight; double check it.

3) Empty out some of the water to add more ice every time but you probably don't need to replace all of the salt every time just a tablespoon or so.

4) Follow the recipes, you cannot make more than that amount in this little thing.

5) Half way through stop your timer, remove the lids, and scrape the ice cream from the sides so that more of the cream mixture gets to touch the metal edges and bottom.  The cream mixture that doesn't touch the metal of the bowl will end up with a milkshake quality to it. Sure it tastes good -- its whipping cream and chocolate why wouldn't it taste good - but not really ice cream texture unless you do the extra work.

6) Be careful when you remove the cover and the internal lid at the end.  It will be difficult to remove so you must have patience and I recommend you do it over a sink just in case.  No matter how long we shook our tests, no matter how cold we made our ingredients before adding them, a good part of the cream mixture was still milkshake texture so it could spill out.

7) Use small bowls so you think you have more than you do.  Granted this is still a 200+ calorie treat because we used heavy cream as directed but my family thought it was a tiny amount.  So I just used the bowls I mentioned that matched and perfect amount of ice cream!




I've seen this Ice Cream Magic Kit in our local Kroger and other stores so you don't need to find it on TV.  I recommend if you think this is something your kids or someone might like that you get one per person.  It was annoying for each of us to wait, then clean things out and dry them and start the next batch.  Ultimately I think multiple-serve ice cream makers are the best idea out there but this might be a fun treat though I just can't see it becoming a regular way you'll want to make a cool treat especially when the temps go up and you have even less time on your side for keeping the ingredients and the ice mixture cool enough. Compared to the PopChef this was not as useful a product. If I had to pick, I'd go with PopChef over this one and just go find the bowls and spoons like we have.