Aroma 4-Quart Traditional Ice Cream Maker – Review
If you love Ice Cream as much as I do, then you either make it, buy it or want to make it! I love to make homemade ice cream and I have always wanted one of the old fashioned hand crank models from my younger years. Finding one of quality, is another story, seems there are either cheap ones or very high priced ones and very little in between. My needs were quite simple – needs to make a few quarts of ice cream, looks nice, has a long life span, reasonable price and, if possible, has an electric motor.
Eventually my searching paid off, along with numerous readings of reviews, specs and such, I was able to find one that fit my expectations – the Aroma 4-Quart Traditional Ice Cream Maker from Aroma on Amazon. This certainly looked like it would do the job even though a few reviewers trashed the product, but it was a bit more than I was willing to spend, $139.99 with free shipping.
Yep, I bought it anyway!
Note: For some reason the price has significantly been reduce to $88.99 plus shipping as of this writing on Amazon.
Here are some of the details from the product page on Amazon:
- Includes convenient electric motor and old-fashioned die-cast hand crank
- Traditional solid fir wood bucket
- Quart capacity – enough for the whole family
- Aluminum mixing canister for faster freezing
- Includes recipes for classic favorite ice cream flavors
- Product Dimensions: 15 x 12.2 x 16.1 inches ; 10.7 pounds
- Shipping Weight: 13.6 pounds
- ASIN: B0056CGNEE
- Item model number: AIC-244
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars (39 customer reviews)
- Hand crank
- Electric motor (120 volts)
- Wooden bucket
- Mixing canister
- Canister lid
- Canister lid cap
- Plastic stirrer
- Dasher (paddle)
- Plus the instruction manual
Note: as soon as you open the box there will be a strong chemical order – this should dissipate within 24 hrs.
The instruction manual is very well done with several ice cream recipe in the back to get you started.
My only complaint at this point is the wooden bucket, the finish was not as nice as the one in the photo, not that I would expect an exact duplicate but mine was scratched in a couple spots and looked like it was stained and finished in under 30 seconds, very rough looking. One other small detail was the pivot cone in the bottom of the bucket, that is positioned to hold the mixing canister in place and rotate smoothly, was installed off center (not enough to affect the performance). This drive me crazy, after all, I paid $139.99 for this, I want it as I expected it to be, perfect.
Note: made in China – I know some of you will ask.
Following the instructions, you need to wash everything (except the electric motor), fill the bucket up with water (to allow the wood to expand), and freeze the mixing canister and dasher.
After washing everything, I froze the mixing canister and dasher while I made some old fashioned vanilla ice cream mix from my ice cream book, which is quite good!
My goal was to make “Butter Finger Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream” similar to what I had on my recent trip to South Lake Tahoe at the Snow Flake Drive-In.
Once my old fashioned vanilla ice cream mix was made, I filled up the frozen mixing canister, inserted the dasher and placed the cover over the top. I set up the Aroma Ice Cream maker for production by placing my mixing canister in the center of the wood bucket, filling the sides with ice and salt, placing the electric motor on top, latching it down, plugging it in and turning on. Everything worked perfectly!
40 minutes later I had a quart of “Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream”! It was still quite loose in thickness so I mixed my Butter Finger piece in quickly and placed the ice cream in the freezer for the next day. There is no doubt that I could have continued mixing to achieve a thicker consistency but my time for this project had run it's course and it is easier to add the pieces when the ice cream mixture is soft.
Now I have only used this ice cream maker once but I am very happy with it. Even though the finish could be better, it didn't affect the performance. The motor handled 1 quart of ice cream mix with no issues, the wood bucket never leaked, the dasher worked as expected and my “Butter Finger Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream” is absolutely delicious!
I'll give it a 4 out of 5 only because of the craftsmanship issues.
If you would like to buy one for yourself or as a gift, please use my Amazon link here: http://amzn.to/1N0n8FT
You can find even more information on the Aroma website: http://www.aroma-housewares.com/kitchen/appliances/AIC-244.html
