Review on BELLA 13716 Cream Maker 1 Liter by Brandon Skeet

I bought the Bella for about $10 on sale at Macy's - no box, no instructions but I used a professional spinner at school and was natural good thing i could pass the . The clerk reassured me that they have a good returns policy and if I have a problem I can easily return it. I was able to find full recipe instructions online. I also read mostly bad reviews about the car, so I decided to go for a test drive. I've made chocolate ice cream side-by-side at Bella's and with my friend's tried-and-true Cuisinart model. I made a cooked base, as simple as possible. I chose cooked as it always gives better (i.e. thicker) results than recipes without cooking. I've read a lot of complaints that the base takes a long time to cook, but to be honest I put it all together while making breakfast. Just cream, egg yolks, sugar, salt, cocoa. I left both freezer trays together in the freezer for about 30 hours. I've seen reviews that said Bella wasn't completely frozen, but both bowls did. I cooked my base to the point where it covered the back of the spoon. This cut is how ice cream base is always made in high-end restaurants. I chilled it in the fridge and popped it in the freezer a few minutes before I was going to spin the ice cream. I could see my base was nice and thick when I took it out of the fridge. I rotated the base in both machines at the same time. Cuisinart and Bella were about as loud. Cuisinart reached its peak thickness faster than expected - maybe 12 minutes, while Bella took about 15. I'd say Cuisinart had a slightly thicker texture than Bella, but both had the texture you'd be looking for - thick, soft innings. It's no secret that to get a firmer texture, you need to freeze in a container for another 2 hours on any home machine. Both bowls left a fairly frozen layer around the edges which I scraped off with a spatula and just ate. Delicious. I would give Cuisinart 4.5 stars. I liked everything about it except that the plastic lid/spatula was difficult to put back on and ended up removing. But the texture was perfect and everything stayed cold and spinning really fast. It was also very easy to tell when the ice cream was ready. Bella I only gave him a 4. The texture was a little softer than Cuisinart's, but that wasn't enough of a difference to be a problem. It was a little harder to tell when to take the ice out because Bella's design is to turn the spatula (while the Cuisinart turns the bowl, the spatula stays still). The Bella's moving blade would also change direction if it encountered enough resistance. I inserted a taste testing spoon and when the spatula hit the spoon it started spinning in the opposite direction. Later, when the ice got quite thick, the spatula changed direction several times because it couldn't handle that kind of thickness anymore. I let the machine spin in this mode for a while for testing purposes, but I think this will be your cue to take the ice away. I suspect most of these bad reviews are from people who are fairly unfamiliar with the basics and methods of ice cream making, and I think they'll get better results by following some of these best practices and reading about home machines in general. I'm keeping my stolen $10 car for the future.