KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker Attachment
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker Attachment
Customer Review: It DOES Freeze Ice Cream
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been very impressed at how easy and inexpensive it is to make excellent gourmet ice cream and sorbet using this ice cream freezer. The dasher turns fast enough to make small ice crystals so the ice cream is smooth and creamy. It makes two quarts of ice cream, which is twice the capacity of stand alone ice cream freezers on the market with a similar design (no ice required), and a quart hardly seemed worth the effort. The dasher and the bowl are the only two pieces to wash and cleanup is very fast and easy. The only down side is, with such ready access to ice cream, it'll be difficult not to gain weight.
One of the reviews claims this unit doesn't freeze ice cream, and the reviewer claimed to be a scientist who "did some calculations".
What the reviewer probably failed to calculate is the way the freezing bowl actually works. The bowl is double walled and the interior is filled with a material that changes phase (liquid to solid) as it freezes. A great deal of heat (or cold) can be stored when a material changes phase. The phase change occurs at a temperature below the freezing point of ice cream. If the reviewer was unable to make ice cream, it's because the freezer was too warm for the phase change material inside the freezer bowl to freeze. Without the phase change, you won't be able to make ice cream. Turn down the thermostat in your freezer and precool the ice cream mixture.
Maybe you are a scientist in the sense of "the social sciences"? You're no physicist. The typical homemaker can figure it out. It isn't rocket science.
Customer Review: Great ice cream maker, but a little tricky
Summary: 4 Stars
My fiance and I received this as a wedding gift. I have a KitchenAid Professional 600 mixer (6 quart lift bowl). The drive motor attachment does not fit snugly at all on the drive. In fact, it will fall off if not held in place. I got on the internet to see if I was doing something wrong, but couldn't figure it out. My fiance tried, too, but couldn't get the attachment to fit, either. Finally, I decided to put the bowl and dasher in place and see if it would hold the drive attachment firmly enough. It skipped a couple of times when I first started the mixer, but finally caught and held firmly and began to make ice cream. The ice cream (I made the French vanilla recipe in the instruction booklet) was delicious and only took about 15-20 minutes to reach a good soft serve consistency.
Overall, I loved the ice cream maker, but the instruction booklet should not say that the drive attachment should fit snugly, when it obviously doesn't (unless I'm missing something). The other drawbacks are the time factor (Bowl and ice cream mix must both be frozen/refrigerated overnight). I keep the bowl in the freezer, but the cooked recipes for ice cream mean that you have to plan ahead to make ice cream, which isn't that big a deal. Also, as others have mentioned, there is not much clearance on the bowl, especially on my mixer, so pouring the mix in is tricky (and messy). I did put the mix in a pitcher with a lip to make it easier and that worked pretty well.
It is a great attachment, but just be aware of some of the negatives before using it.
Customer Review: Great ice cream maker!
Summary: 5 Stars
After lots of research I decided to buy this attachment for my Kitchen Aid, instead of a stand alone ice cream maker. I couldn't be happier!
It's terrific. I've made four batches, over the last month or so. The first was a Vanilla using the Ben and Jerry cookbook. Everyone loved this one and I used pasteurized eggs, as recommended by some reviewers of that book, instead of the raw eggs they called for.
Next we made Blackberry frozen yogurt. We have a lot of blackberry bushes and we adapted it from a strawberry recipe in 'The Idiots guide to homemade ice cream and frozen yogurt' and it was great.
Third up was Alton Brown's vanilla from the Food Network. The consistency was a little icy but the flavor was great as it called for using a fresh vanilla bean.
Our favorite so far was the Chocolate from David Lebovitz's 'The Perfect Scoop' I've never made custard before and it was a bit complicated but it was THE BEST chocolate ice cream we've ever had.
Two notes:
First off I use more milk and less cream in every recipe I try. We usually buy "light' ice cream so I like to make our homemade versions lighter too. I use a mixture of regular milk with a little half and half.
Secondly, when the ice cream is ready it's a very soft consistency, and really should go in the freezer for a few hours or it melts in minutes.
I tend to make it on a Sunday morning (and make the mix on Sat if it needs to chill) and then we have fresh ice cream with our Sunday dinner - yum!
Customer Review: Very handy equipment
Summary: 5 Stars
This attachment makes excellent ice cream. After reading the reviews, I purchased the unit and have several comments. I had a thirty year old well used stand K-5 and I too had difficulty attaching the dasher. Kitchen Aid customer service worked with me to ensure my satisfaction to a high level rarely seen in todays world. I cannot say enough for their response to my problem. The ability to fill the bowl is easily handled by using a stainless steel mixing bowl to pour the mixture into the freezer bowl, no different than using the regular bowls on the stand mixer. The need to cool the mix to near freezing before churning is only an in-convenience if not planned for in advance. Also be sure your freezer is working properly. Measure the temperature and be sure it is zero F or lower where it should be for proper food storage. All in all, this is a great way to produce frozen deserts and drinks for a small family. Larger quantities can be prepared by planning and production through several days in advance. Obviously, this is not designed for a family of eight to have home made ice cream every night, but a batch could be completed once a day easily. Freezing the bowl for 18 hours is a small price to pay for not packing a conventional freezer with ice and salt and then churning for an hour or so. Properly chilled mix can produce a full batch in about 15 minutes. It is really great to have attachments for one power source rather than another full machine eventually destined to the appliance graveyard in the cellar.Customer Review: perfect!!
Summary: 5 Stars
After much research I decided that this was the ice cream maker for me. I make my own yogurt and wanted to make my own frozen yogurt too (of course regular ice cream is made as well). Hints for proper use: Make sure you store it in the freezer and that your freezer is set BELOW ZERO. It's perfect if you have a deep freezer since they are usually kept at -10 to 0 degrees. A normal freezer in your kitchen is often more in the range of 10-15 degrees. Since it has such a large capacity in comparison to other machines, it needs to be colder, longer, in order to freeze your cream. Also you NEED to refrigerate your recipe for well over an hour to make sure that it is well chilled, again, the colder it is going into the machine, the colder the bowl will stay so it can do it's job. The bowl needs to be brought out immediately before freezing process and you must turn it on to low BEFORE putting in your mix. If you don't, as with any machine with a frozen bowl, your liquid could freeze quite thick before you turn it on and your dasher will sieze up. With those points taken into account, it is VERY easy to use, takes no room to store (since the bowl stays in the freezer and theres no motor or base or anything) all you have to store is the dasher and the spindly thing that attaches it to your machine. Also, if you lose you directions, like I did, before you know what you're doing, the customer service number at kitchenaid is full of very nice people. reminds me of the butterball turkey line, only for appliances.