Nostalgia Electrics 4-Quart Blue Bucket Electric Ice Cream Maker, ICMP400BLUE

After reading a few reviews I decided to buy this ice cream maker and am glad I did, becuase it works great. I'd like to address some of the issues the other reviews had. 1) Ice cream comes out like soft serve. I'm. Not sure if people don't read instructions, but it very clearly states that the ice cream will come out that way and will need to be in the freezer for 4 hours afterwards. Even my ice cream cookbook (which is not associated with the ice cream maker) states that all of the recipes need to frozen for at least 4 hours. 2) The ice cream maker is loud. It's a metal cylinder scraping against ice, so it's going to make noise. Overall, if you read the instructions and use common sense, you shouldn't have any problems with it.

I purchased this electric ice cream maker to make my own ice cream with real ingredients. I am very happy with my choice of this compact maker. I've had a manual one in the past and found the hand churning a chore after a while. The Nostalgia Ice Cream Maker works very well, just as described, by following the directions as given and using the recipes included as your starting point. The ice cream comes out creamy, has a thick consistency right out of the machine and tastes like the best store-bought minus the gum, fillers and E stuff. I do slightly cook the egg base before churning as suggested in the recipe booklet. I find the directions true and the machine auto stops when done after about 30 minutes. The noise is like that of any mixer. The ice and salt layering is easy to do. I usually add some of both once during the process. Since it makes a gallon of ice cream and I like to vary flavors, I divide up the soft ice cream into 4 parts after churning to add flavors and mix it up, one with peppermint candies, one chocolate chip, one pecan etc. To get really hard ice cream, it goes in the freezer for about an hour. It keeps easily a week or more, if not eaten up before then.