Ice Appliance Ice Cream Pro

Very good at first and made really good ice cream. However the lugs on the lid broke and it has been impossible to find a replacement - very disappointing as it was not cheap. Can anyone help?

I've made 2 ice creams and 1 sorbet so far with not too impressive results. The two ice creams (chocolate and Baileys) had 500ml of a perfect custard to kick off with but 75 minutes later was still completely fluid with no hint of freezing despite reading -14C; finally giving up I put the mixture in the fridge and left an hour and had a reasonable product, though no different in quality to one where you freeze the bowl first. The sorbet (lime and passionfruit) again went down to minus double digits but ended up in the freezer in a liquid form. When I pulled the bowl out it struck me that the -15C reading felt more like +5C (next time I will verify this!).On the plus side it is quiet but I would prefer something noisy that did its job!----------Having now tried 6 times with this unit I've came to the conclusion either (1) I have a faulty unit or (2) it is ineffective in doing its job. Its last effort was 350ml chilled custard, 2 hours, about a tablespoon full of thickened product on the base of the cannister. Following instruction manual we put it in freezer to complete but what resulted was effectively hard frozen custard. This is a piece of junk if you ask me.

I wish I had seen this machine ten years ago as it really does fill the bill for me. After fiddling around with cheaper types which involved pre-freezing the chiller bowl the Ice Cream Pro is simplicity itself to use and, so far, I have had perfect results. The machine is robust and very quiet in operation. I particularly like the ability to make double quantities by using the chiller compartment without the insert in place; not something you would necessarily want to do often but a handy facility. The texture/consistency of the finished ice cream is very good although a little experimentation is required with the recipe to achieve this. None of my experiments have been left unbeaten so far.The Ice Cream Pro is not perfect but the faults are minor. The mixing paddle is moulded plastic with several 'nooks and crannies' which make scraping the ice cream off more difficult. Other users have commented on the small and awkwardly placed vent in the lid which is used for adding ingredients during mixing. They are right, it is badly designed although I find turning the machine 90 degrees helps. Further, lining up the top of the mixing paddle to take the mixing motor can be fiddly. None of these gripes would put me off buying another Ice Cream Pro if the need arose. I would recommend the machine to anyone wanting an easy route to good home-made ice cream.

There is no doubt that this machine will make ice cream but not without some problems along the way. The first problem was the manual as mentioned elsewhere within these reviews. It rates as poor to very poor; it does not contain the address of the manufacturer/supplier or a telephone number for customer support. The quality of the machine appears to be very good and to supply such a poor operator manual is disappointing.On our first attempt to make ice cream the paddle stopped rotating even though the mixing indicator light was on. We referred to the manual which was when we realised how useless it was. We were not sure what to do at this stage as we realised that the paddle had become frozen solid. After a lot of fiddling around we managed to release the paddle and retrieve the ice cream. The cause of this issue is the length of time you set the cooling function to run for. We set it for the time suggested in the recipe in the manual but the mixture had frozen well before the time setting had completed. We have experimented with various time settings to try and find the right one which does not freeze the machine solid.And that is where the patience is required - this is not really a start and run to completion machine. It requires regular checking. The length of time required will depend on the temperature of the ingredients and the ambient temperature which can all vary with each batch you make.It is quite an expensive machine and at this level I would have expected it to have a mixer cut out if the paddle is stalled. So it does require a learning curve to adapt to the machine which is not made easier by the poor manual. It is because the operator manual does not anticipate or help with the problems that you are likely to encounter I have only given it the 3 stars. Its OK in that it makes ice cream but not as easily as you might expect it to.Edit - Since writing the review we have made some ice cream which requires ingredients adding during mixing and discovered that the aperture for this is rather too small and ended up with a mess all down the side of the machine.