Andrew James Professional Fully Automatic Ice Cream Maker With Built-in Compressor + 128 Page Ice Cream Maker Cook Book.

This Ice Cream maker is an extremely good product. Add fruit, sugar and cream, and in 50 minutes perfect ice cream. Other ice cream makers are being reviewed as "noisy"; this one isn't. In fact, it's so quite that one can only just tell if the compressor's running. It is very easy to clean, and does appear to stop driving the paddle if the mix sets too solid for it to turn. My only criticism is the aluminium tub for the ice cream; it would be better if it were made of stainless steel.

I bought this item because my previous experiences with the "freeze the bowl and pray" type ice cream makers had been very disappointing. This machine does make very good ice cream. but it is fiddly and to my mind there is are two huge whopping design flaws which detract from the entire experience.

The machine makes just over a litre of ice cream. To freeze the ice cream mix you set the machine going, make sure the paddle is rotating and pour the mix into the freezing cylinder. The paddle is driven at the top and has a slightly concave bottom to the main shaft which sits on a nub at the bottom of the cylinder. The paddle is very prone to freezing solid at the bottom and having a puddle of unfrozen mix sitting above. The drive mechanism seems terribly fragile and I'm worried it will break.

The other design flaw is the size of the orifice through which the mix is poured into the cylinder. It's minute, and pouring a pint or more of goopy custardy mix or youghurt through an orifice with a width of approximately 1.5 cm (the orifice is roughly rectangular and is longer at say 3cm) but it takes a steady hand to pour. I ended up customising a funnel that I could fit into the gap and pour more safely.

The machine is built in China and the instructions are a bit cursory. It doesn't stress the fact that you need to set the machine off before you pour in the mix. I got that from the free book of ice cream recipes which came with the machine.

Over all it's good and makes nice product, but it isn't a set it off and go away to do something else experience, you may well find yourself disassembling the machine to manually stir the mix a couple of times.

WE LOVE this Ice Cream Maker. I am a Diabetic, and so wanted to be able to make low sugar, and also non dairy ice cream, so bought this and Vice Cream (recipe book for Vegan Ice Creams). I have 4 young children, and we have fun making it, and cannot wait for the beeps to tell us its time to enjoy - and we have all enjoyed every recipe.

The recipes that come with the ice cream maker are great also, and I would recommend reading through it, as it gives you tips and reasonings for how to get a good batch of ice cream.

I tend to take the mixing paddle out the second it stops turning, as it can be hard to extract your ice cream when it is frozen into it.

Also, I have discovered that if you boil water, and pour it into a bowl, then stand the metal ice cream bowl in it for a minute or less, you can then pour the whole ice cream out in 1 block. I then put it into a plastic tupperware box and re shape it, for freezing and storage - but actually rarely have any left after we have all sampled it (several times).

Only danger of having such a machine, is that the temptation to eat a lot of ice cream is there all the time!

I don't feel so guilty though if it's non dairy - as a fraction of the fat!!

After the 50 minutes is up, the ice cream is rarely frozen all the way through, so you can either leave it in, to be continually frozen for up to 1 hour, or extract it, as described above, and then re freeze it until you need it. We have discovered that it gets very frozen (no soft scoop rubbish here), so when you are going to eat it, take it out 20 mins prior!

The machine looks great on our counter, and take pride of place! 10 out of 10!!