Ninja - CREAMi, Ice Cream Maker, 7 One-Touch Programs - Cloud Silver

Works great. I love that I can make healthy ice cream.

I should say up front that I received the Ninja CREAMi for the purposes of providing a fair and unbiased review. And, I must say, I love reviewing items by Ninja. I always eat well when a Ninja product comes into the kitchen. For the past week and a half, I have had ice cream, sorbets, and a few milk shakes. The Ninja CREAMi is a fun way to make ice cream and frozen deserts at home. However, instructions can be a bit contradictory, and the device doesn’t always behave as you would expect. Limitations with the design meant frozen bits of fruit or undissolved bits of cocoa got stuck to the sides or the bottoms of the pints. My milkshakes were an outright disaster. However, despite any setbacks, I still had a lot of fun with the CREAMi. Most of the deserts tasted great. For those reasons, I am recommending the Ninja CREAMi. SETUP: The Ninja CREAMi comes with three pints and lids, the base unit, a creamerizer paddle, and an outer bowl and lid. Detailed instructions are hard to come by at the moment, but the quick start and recipe guide do a good job explaining set up. All the components except for the base are top shelf dishwasher safe. EXECUTION: I started with a pint of the vanilla ice cream from the recipe guide and a mango sorbet. Both recipes were easy enough to execute. The sorbet was just placing canned fruit into the pint and topping with juice until you reached the predesignated fill line. Most recipes require the pint and their contents be frozen for 24 hours. You then remove the lid from the pint, lock the pint into the outer bowl and lid, place bowl onto the base, twist to raise the bowl up, and then select which frozen desert you want to make on the device. I made up a few pints of vanilla and let them sit in the freezer. They still tasted great a few days after processing. It seemed most recipes could keep for up to two weeks in a freezer. This device is loud. It sounds like you are running a blender or a garbage disposal. If you have any sensitive neighbors or pets, probably best to not run the CREAMi too late at night. When making ice cream, your ice cream may come out looking crumbly. If that is the case, you simply place the bowl back on the stand and select re-spin from the front panel. Over the course of the last week, I have made chocolate ice cream, plain vanilla ice cream, chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, strawberry ice cream, mango sorbet, mandarin orange sorbet, and two milk shakes. Most of those recipes came out well. I have another pint of vanilla freezing in the fridge right now. I followed the instructions that came with the device for each recipe because everything felt like it had to be extremely specific for risk of damaging the machine. Ninja warns against using pints that froze at an angle. They warn against using certain ingredients unless they are properly frozen in advance. With rules against using unlevel pints, I found myself a bit surprised by the milk shake recipe which just uses store bought ice cream and milk. When I tried making milkshakes, the paddle would catch the ice cream at an angle and spin the CREAMi around on the cabinet. It made a mess. I am sure Ninja would just say my freezer is too cold, the ice cream was too hard, and that’s why the milkshake feature didn’t work very well. And that might be. But even if the milkshake feature had worked better, it still did not make very much. In fact, that is probably one of my biggest complaints with this setup. It is great to be able to make your own pint of ice cream, but it’s just a pint. It was perfect for two or three people, but if you have a family of four or five, you best be ready to make several pints. The other design flaw is that the paddle does not fully reach the sides of the pints. That makes sense as the paddle would then be scraping up the pint. But the result was, I had hard, icy mango pieces that froze to the side of the container. The outer sides of the sorbet were not near as creamy as the center. Ninja has a promotion in the quick start guide offering a free pint container as a condition for registering the CREAMi online. A lot of the QR codes and offers were not quite live at the time of my testing, but I look forward to picking up more pints and trying my hand at more treats in the future. Individual pint containers sell on Ninja’s website for $14.95 a piece or $19.99 for two. You can also buy replacements for all the components from Ninja’s website. SUGGESTIONS: If you want to make Strawberry, be sure to slice up and freeze some strawberry pieces to incorporate as mix-ins later. Also, if you make chocolate, I suggest straining out the mixture as you pour it into the pint. You know how you can have undissolved cocoa when you try to make hot cocoa? Well, that can happen with the chocolate ice cream recipe as well. CONCLUSION: it is not a perfect execution, but I still really like the CREAMi. I probably would not use the CREAMi to make another milkshake when I have a perfectly good blender, but the pints of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate all tasted good. I wish the device had done a better job fully incorporating the edges of the pints, but as it is, I thought everything I made tasted good. The vanilla with chocolate chips and cookie dough tastes amazing. It is nice to be able to make ice cream and frozen deserts knowing full well what is going into it. Making sorbet is a simple and healthy way to make up a frozen desert. I am looking forward to trying out the gelato. I recommend the CREAMi. I have had a lot of fun with it. Just make sure you are aware of the limitations of the device going into it.

Received Creameri in good condition. Instructions were accurate for our first test run of vanilla ice cream which after freezing overnight and than putting it thru the creameri for the final product. It tasted better than some ice creams we have bought At this time we would recommend this item.

Fantastic fun. If you are on a diet or watching calories this gives you the ability to even make protein shake icecream. In addition it really easy to use. Just be careful you always put the lid on right, i did it mindlessly once and got it jammed. Easy display and online recipes

I already have a good ice cream maker (with a built-in compressor) but this was interesting. My kids love making the ice cream but the only downside (aside from the price) is waiting 24 hours before you can eat it. It is very similar to F'Real ice cream shakes and desserts that you can get at convenience stores. It comes with 3 containers.

Does ninja creamy is so amazing and makes the most creamy ice cream I ever had

Absolutely love my ninja creami i wish it wasnt so loud but ill take that a few mins as long as i can have the icecream

I’ll tell you what.. I didn’t know that I was missing out until I got this little machine. And with the way it’s been hot outside too, this has definitely been the best new addition to my small appliances. I’ve already made sorbet and two different types of ice cream with dairy alternatives. The possibilities are endless for what you can create. Make sure you clean after every use and even get the little piece on the machine that you cannot remove as well. I’m addicted to making my own ice cream. If you get this… you will totally be too! This is one purchase you won’t regret.

I have been using the Creami for about a week and in that time we made three pints of ice cream. This is my first ice cream "maker" and if I had known it was this easy, I would have started making my own ice cream a long time ago! Although this is my first ice cream maker, I have looked at other brands and machines and what makes the Creami different is it doesn't "freeze" the ice cream. Instead you freeze it first in the provided pint containers, then use the machine to "blend" the results. In that way, it's more of a fancy blender (although don't use it at such) vs. what I would consider a traditional ice cream maker. There's no tubs to pre-freeze and you don't need to have ice, cold water or salt avaialble. It includes a recipe book with a lot of great recipes - I can't wait to try them all. The basic recipe for either a vanilla or chocolate "base" uses milk, heavy cream and cream cheese. Once the base is frozen (they advise 24 hours), you use the machine to "cream" the base, then add in "blend ins" like nuts, cookies, etc. and mix again. The consistency and mouthfeel of the ice cream it produced is very similar, if not identical to ice cream we've had from local craft ice cream shops. The only downsides are the mixing "bowl" is plastic and has a lot of nooks and crannies to clean and the machine only includes one paddle, so you'll need to wash it between uses if you are making/mixing multiple flavors in one session.