A Descent into Milk-Fuelled Madness: One Woman's Quest to Find the Perfect Ice-Cream Maker

A writer's life is not always as glamorous as it seems. For one writer, testing 13 ice-cream machines at once during the hottest days of the year has taken on a slightly different meaning, particularly the screaming part.

The writer, who was tasked with testing the best ice-cream makers for a publication, has deepened her appreciation for frozen desserts. She has cracked more than three dozen eggs, zested 30 lemons, and run to the shops for several emergency pints of milk after an unplanned butter disaster.

## The Churn of Events

The first challenge was figuring out how many ingredients she needed to test all those machines - a lot, as it turns out. She witnessed great confusion in her food delivery driver's eyes when he arrived at her door for the second time in a week, carrying bags filled with nothing but eggs, lemons, milk, cream, and sugar.

After getting over the embarrassment of her absurd ingredients order, she got to work making batches of Felicity Cloake's perfect vanilla ice-cream and lemon sorbet recipes in each machine. She also tested a standard recipe consisting of double cream, sugar, and milk, a variant of which could often be found in each machine's accompanying booklet.

## The Cold Hard Truth

Making delicious ice-cream, then consuming it - what a great life, she thought to herself. Little did she know this would be the start of her descent into several long weeks of milk-fuelled madness during record-breaking July heatwaves.

She accidentally made butter - twice - when a recipe from one machine's booklet took too long to churn, turning the high-fat mixture into butter before it was able to freeze. And while she loves making her own butter, she wouldn't recommend anyone do this in a soft-serve machine. You'll spend the next 45 minutes scraping it from every nook, spout, and corner, trying not to completely lose the plot.

Then there was the smell. Her long-suffering partner burst into her office on one occasion, despairing that the "whole house stinks of milk". (Don't feel too sorry for him, though: he got to eat a lot of ice-cream.)

Despite the milk-related disasters, she's still not sick of ice-cream. In fact, she's gained a real appreciation for just how good homemade ice-cream can be. That said, she might stick to Ben & Jerry's for the rest of the summer - or at least until the house stops smelling of milk.

| Model | Counter Space | Weight | | --- | --- | --- | | Caso Design's compressor IceCreamer | Large | Heavy | | Ninja Creami | Small | Light | | Nutribullet Chill | Compact | Light | | Cuisinart Solo Scoops | Compact | Light | | GreenPan Frost | Large | Heavy |

| Model | Recommended | | --- | --- | | Caso Design's compressor IceCreamer | Yes | | Ninja Creami | Yes | | Nutribullet Chill | Yes | | Cuisinart Solo Scoops | Yes | | GreenPan Frost | No |