KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker Attachment
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of KitchenAid KICA0WH Ice Cream Maker Attachment
Customer Review: Easy and great results
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading reviews I was hesitant, but am very I went ahead with my purchase, as I have had nothing but success.
I think there are many variables to factor in when evaluating the ice cream attachment, so here are my exact situations.
Dasher assembly- I have a "heavy duty" bowl-lift mixer from the early 90's. The dasher is VERY easy to line up and attach, perhaps the bowl-lift mixer is easier than the tilt-head...I'm not sure, but I had absolutely no problem, even the first time.
Room-temp- around 76 degrees
Freezing bowl- I have a cheap GE fridge with a top-freezer that does not have it's own adjustment. If I lower the refridgerator dial, my produce will freeze, my dial 9 is coldest, and my fridge is set at 4! I froze the bowl right side up (keep the blue gel at the bottom and allow the side walls for expansion?) in the back of the freezer compartment.
Freezing ice cream- Upon reading the reviews, I decided to cover my mixer with a heavy towel the first time to insulate. This is easy and speeds up the chilling, but I personally found it to be unnecessary for me. I am using a custard-style ice cream recipe with 3 cups liq/8 yolks, and I have no problem at all with the freezing.. the batch I just made I cooked the custard last night until thick, and it froze up in 5 minutes, and my bowl is still incredibly cold. It takes about 2 hours on the counter until I can scrape (rubber spatula) the little bits frozen to the sides.
Durability- I"m not concerned with the dasher assembly breaking..that is why it is constructed with a "break away" function. To not break the dasher or the mixer. I am going to handle the bowl very carefully as to try not crack the cold plastic, and let the bowl warm up to room temperature on it's own...never filling with warm water, hopefully that will help it not to have the blue gel leaks mentioned. (My old cheap/non-KitchenAid ice cream maker leaked the blue gel too after a while, but I did not know to be careful, and I always froze that old one upside down, so I think I busted the seal..again that was a cheap model not this KitchenAid)
Pouring into mixer- I had no problem getting the custard mix into the mixer, but I am also not concerned about hitting the tops of the rotating dasher, since the mix will still fall into the machine.
sidenote- I made a cinnamon/rum extract ice cream last night, and the cinnamon did not mix with the cream and clumped up terrible, I refridgerated it anyway and still made it today and to my surprise the little clumps all broke apart in the mixer very quickly, completely mixed in, and the ice cream had a wonderful texture.
If making custard-style, be sure to cook the custard until nice and thick (coats back of spoon) as recipes mention, the ice cream texture will be way creamier!
Customer Review: Exactly What You'd Expect from KitchenAid
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned my KA stand mixer for years, and it remains my favorite kitchen assistant. The ability to expand its uses plus my general distaste for kitchen uni-taskers (yes, I co-opted the term from Alton Brown) plus a discounted price compelled me to add this attachment to my kitchen arsenal. Having used it once, I can say I'd absolutely buy it again.
I'm not going to recount my agreement or disagreement with any previous reviews. The bottom line is that everyone will formulate his or her own opinion about this product.
I do want to add a reassurance that if you prepare the full-size recipe, you'll be skeptical that all that fluid is going to fit into the freezer bowl. Put those fears aside because, yes, it'll all fit, with room to spare for the expansion of the batter as it freezes (notwithstanding my remark about not commenting on previous reviews, I'll add my 2-cents' worth that when the final product has frozen, it expands beyond the top of the bowl and that removing the dasher can be messy. Placing the bowl in the sink before you remove the dasher will make for a much easier clean up).
I do want to express a few minor quibbles with the instructions in the owner's manual:
First, the French Vanilla recipe instructs you to add the hot half-and-half to the egg/sugar mixture slowly. I'm guessing that most folks using this product would understand that pouring hot liquid into a mixture containing raw eggs could result in scrambled eggs and that, therefore, one should temper the egg mixture before adding the remainder of the liquid. On the other hand, why leave that to chance? A simple instruction specifically about tempering the egg mixture would likely save a user from the disappointment of ruining the first part of the batter.
Second, speaking of the batter, has anyone else noticed that the French Vanilla recipe calls for 2 1/2 cups of whipping cream? I don't keep or use copious amounts of whipping cream, and most whipping cream comes in a one-pint (i.e 2-cup) container, leaving me with the choice between wasting the better part of a second container or deviating from the recipe the first time around. I was comfortable that the difference between whipping cream and half-and-half, especially in the small volume involved, would be minimal, and I opted for the second choice. I substituted an extra 1/2 cup of half-and-half, and the ice cream came out beautifully. Yes, the manual does give a general commentary about various dairy products and their impact on the finished ice cream, but why not put those disclaimers within the actual recipe?
Lest I seem overly negative, that's not my intent. I am thoroughly delighted with this device, and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who is contemplating buying it.
Customer Review: Bad function all around.
Summary: 1 Stars
For starters, there's a simple problem with this ice cream maker that should have been obvious to me before I purchased it. Ice cream that use ice and salt to freeze the batter get colder over time, allowing the ice cream to churn for a good while before the it is cold enough to be frozen. This product is at its coldest from the start. It will only get less cold from there. Your ice cream will freeze instantly when you pour it in the bowl and may cause the dasher to stop spinning almost immediately - even if you follow the directions by starting the dasher before you add the batter.
Furthermore, it's almost impossible to make two batches in a row. The freezing bowl simply won't be cold enough by the time the second batch starts. And you have to freeze it for 15 hours before you can use it again.
Getting past this immediate flaw, lets talk about everything else that's wrong with it.
The dasher, as I mentioned, must be in motion when you pour the batter in. Unfortunately, its really difficult to get the batter into this bowl while its on the stand with the mixer in motion. I got batter all over my mixer, on the counter, everywhere. It needs a spout to pour the batter into from the side. No such accessory exists - and if it did, wouldn't it be sort of ridiculous to have to buy accessories for your accessories?
The dasher is turned by a drive-assembly that does not attach to the pin of the mixer. Your just supposed to press it up onto the motor head where tiny rubber tabs on the side will hold it in place. This doesn't work well at all. The drive-assembly doesn't fit well onto the motor head, so it just pops off while the mixer is in motion, as soon as the batter offers any resistance - which it does immediately, because as I said, this mixer is as cold as it's going to get from the moment you begin. You end up with batter that hasn't churned properly and that is frozen solid to the sides of the bowl but is still liquid in the middle. Even if you can keep it spinning, the drive-assembly slips out of place and causes the dasher to turn at a bad angle, and also causes your mixer to make some really disturbing noises.
In the end, you end up with a big mess in your kitchen, ice cream that hasn't expanded to its full size because it wasn't churned properly, and the threat of damage to your very expensive mixer. I switched to this mixer from and ice and salt mixer because I figured it would be louder, cleaner, and less work. now I'm switching back to the ice and salt mixer because its just as loud as the noises this mixer makes while working, it works better, and I can make as many batches of ice cream I want in a single day as long as I have ice.
Customer Review: VERY 1 Stars
I am EXTREMELY disappointed with the Kitchen Aid ice cream maker. First thing I noticed, right out of the box, is that the mixer paddle is made out of very cheap and wimpy plastic! I love the mixer because it is built like a tank and will likely last far longer than I do (just replace the brushes every now and then). I've got the shredder and meat grinder attachments and they are also built very solid. So what is it with this cheapo plastic paddle? Plastic gets brittle and breaks easily with age, and I fully expect the paddle will break and need replacement every few years.Next, I tried to mount the attachment on my mixer. We have a Kitchen Aid purchased in 1988 but the ice cream maker is supposed to fit all models, period. There is an adapter that slides on and is supposed to be held into place by little rubber dots(friction fit, does not lock on), but the adapter keeps falling off. This design is bad enough, but wait, it gets worse. The metal spindle that you normally attach things to is supposed to spin freely inside one hole of the adapter. But the metal pin on the spindle immediately began chewing a hole through the side when we turned it on. Good Grief.
I figured that surely, I must have installed something incorrectly, because Kitchen Aid stuff is the best built stuff around, right? But after carefully re-reading the directions and carefully studying everything, I confirmed that it is installed correctly. Wow. It really needs an adapter to fit over the spindle to protect the plastic adapter from the pin. But nothing is provided. So to make the ice cream maker work without self destructing, I had to wrap duct tape around the spindle and locking pin. Wow. A duct tape rigged repair on a new attachment, right out of the box, made by Kitchen Aid. Who would have believed it?
Normally Kitchen Aid stuff is really top notch so I'm wondering what the heck is going on. My best guess is that the design of the mixer must have changed sometime after we bought ours, and that the adapter fits correctly on newer models (the adapter can go on one of two ways, depending on the type of mixer head). Lots of people seem happy with it, so maybe they have newer mixers and it goes together better than it does on mine. But it still doesn't excuse the cheap plastic batter.
I think Kitchen Aid really needs to rethink this product. First, they need to make sure the quality of materials live up to the reputation of the brand. And second, they need to make sure that when they say it fits all models, it really fits all models. Otherwise, provide a warning that it won't fit older mixers.
Customer Review: Highly recommended, but could be better.
Summary: 4 Stars
I've made 3 batches of ice cream so far, and it does indeed make delicious ice cream. If you already have a Kitchen Aid mixer, this is probably your best ice-cream maker option, dispite its quirks, which are relatively easy to overcome:
Pros: Makes great ice cream; makes great use of your KA mixer and eliminates the need to buy a separate "stand-alone" ice cream maker; fun to use, once you know how to deal with its quirks, decent capacity at 2 Qts.
Cons/Quirks: You have to freeze the bowl for a day in a very cold freezer before you can use it (I consider this a quirk more than a con... I have an extra freezer and keep it in there when not in use, so it doesn't take up cabinet space, which for me is a plus). You do have to be careful and use a container with a spout in order to add ingredients while the machine is in motion (and it is not recommended to let the machine stop at all, or your dasher (mixer) attachment is likely to freeze in place, and then break when you turn on the motor). Its true that the dasher and coupler are made of cheap plastic... seems to work fine for me, but I wonder it they will hold up over time. I added fresh pitted, halved cherries to my French vanilla, and then let it freeze in the extra freezer in my basement. I checked it a few hours later (the ice cream was in a clear Rubbermaid bowl), and noticed that the ice cream was firming up, but the cherries had all sunk to the bottom-- they didn't stay suspended in the ice cream (the ice cream tends to end up somewhere between a "yoghurt" and a "soft-serve" consistency, and you have to finish off the freezing process by letting it sit in the freezer overnight, otherwise the ice cream will likely be softer than you'd want it to be. As far a the fresh cherry mix-ins are concerned, I simply mixed up the ice cream by hand to re-suspend them (after a few hours in the freezer), and it came out perfect (but if I hadn't checked and remixed the ice cream, my "add-ins" would all be frozen in place and on the bottom. This is a quirk, and if you deal with it, you can still get great ice cream, even with chunky add-ins. Finally, although my bowl hasn't leaked any of the blue fluid, there are enough reviews complaining about this that I think it could potentially be a problem with the design... I hope mine never leaks.
Overall, I'm quite happy with it, and I much prefer making good use of my KA mixer (with this attachment) rather than buying a stand-alone machine.... but be prepared to deal with the quirks. This machine is not idiot-proof, and if you can't deal with it, perhaps you should consider a stand-alone unit with built-in freezing unit.