Ice Cream baby!
Written: Jul 14 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Don't have to assemble, very easy to use,seems durable, tastes good
Cons: Takes a little longer than directions say it does, sometimes ice cream is hard to scrape off, a lot of cleaning up
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| jenne3's Full Review: Baskin Robbins Ice Cream Maker |
My three year old daughter received the Baskin Robbins ice cream maker for her birthday a couple weeks ago. By the look on her face, she didn't quite know what to do with this present at first, until it was explained to her that she gets to make her own ice cream. Well she heard "ice cream" and was all for it.
The maker itself is a plastic piece<the base> that has a crank that you turn to make the ice cream. It doesn't have any electric parts and isn't run on batteries. It's all manually done. Also, you don't have to get out the ole screwdriver to put it together either, which is definitely a plus.
Basically, the maker contains a cylinder that you fill with ice, salt<to make it colder>, and warm water. The directions are very good and tell you exactly how much to use. Then you put the top on the cylinder and place it back in the base. It has a handle on the crank to turn and rotate the cylinder. The top of the cylinder has a gear that touches another gear that the crank rotates. Very easy to use.
The maker also comes with ice cream packets. My daughter's came with two packets of vanilla and a packet of bubble-gum flavored ice cream. The ice cream is a powder that you mix with half and half, which you supply. Then after you mix it, you pour the liquid into the hole at the top of the base. Then you just turn the crank slowly and your making ice cream!
The liquid ice cream sits in the base and when you turn the crank, it rotates the cylinder. The cylinder then picks up the liquid and because it filled with the ice, salt and water, it freezes it.
It says you have to rotate it for about three to five minutes. But we found it is more like five to ten minutes.
In the front of the base is a piece called the scraper that hooks in front of the cylinder. When you are ready to test to see if the ice cream is frozen enough, you push the scraper into the cylinder and turn the crank. The scraper also has a holder attached to it that kind of looks like a mini ladle. You scrape the ice cream and it falls off into the holder.
The good thing is that if you start to scrap it and it isn't frozen enough, all you have to do is pull the scraper forward so it isn't touching the cylinder anymore. Then just keep turning the crank until it is the consistency that you want. My daughter loved the testing part because she got to take her little taster spoon and try what was already scraped. She didn't care if it was semi frozen. This is a good thing to do so you don't have to hear "is it done yeeeeeeeet?" a thousand times.
It comes with, I think, five little cups with the Baskin Robbins logo on it. It also includes five tester spoons and five little pink spoons to eat with.
When you are ready, just put the ice cream in the cups and voila! Eatin time! Ours also came with a packet of rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, nerds candy, and bubble-gum bits to put on top of the ice cream. There is a cute little shaker you pour the sprinkles or candy into so that the kids can sprinkle it on their ice cream. Also, there is a cookie crumbler that you can put cookies into and smash them up. However, we found that they have to be very small cookies or a regular size cookie broken up to fit into the crumbler.
Each of the accessories you get<shaker, crumbler, spoons> have their own little place in the base where you can put them. It's very cute.
We tried the vanilla, since we had visions of bubble-gum bits entwined in my daughter's hair and on our carpet. We used the rainbow sprinkles and nerds candy. To our surprise, it tasted pretty darn good . My daughter, the most important critic, absolutely loved it.
I believe the age on the maker is five and up. Since my daughter is only three, we were concerned she was too young for it. But it's easily done with a small child with a parent's supervision and help. We didn't let her touch the cylinder since the outside of it is metal and it gets very cold. We had visions of that movie, " A Christmas Story", where the little boy gets his tongue frozen to a pole. But we measured the salt and let her pour it in. While my husband finished filling the cylinder, I gave my daughter the vanilla packet. She poured it into a bowl herself. I measured the half and half and then gave her a spoon and let her have at it. She really enjoyed mixing it herself. Then we put the mixture into a cup that was easy to pour and gave it to her to do. My daughter did most of the turning of the crank with no problem until finally she told us "my arm hurts sooo bad, it might fall off." She tends to be a tad dramatic.
The whole thing was very easy for her to do and didn't frustrate her in the least. It was a great thing to do together and she loved the taste of it and pouring on all the toppings. My husband and I wanted to do our own toppings, but we were outvoted on that. My daughter decided it was her job. Hey who is the parent here? Anyhow, I digress. It made three full cups of ice cream which surprised us also. We thought it was going to be very cheesy and make hardly any.
You can get replacement packets at Toys R Us. The ones I found were berry, chocolate, vanilla and bubble-gum. It came three to a pack. The pack also includes a couple of toppings<bubble-gum bits, chocolate chips, nerds, sprinkles>depending on which flavors you go with. The pack cost about six dollars.
She had a lot of fun with this toy and probably won't get bored with it. As she gets older she be able to do more of the measuring and filling of the container. Plus its ice cream, what more can you ask for?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jenne3
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Location: MD
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 15 members
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