jeffshoaf

Here are some miscellaneous vanilla ice cream servings, some made with full sugar, some with monk fruit - I didn't keep good notes so I'm not sure which are which, but all were tasty! I don't think I have a picture of the best I've made to date; it was just a can of peaches in natural peach juice and a can of eagle brand sweetened condensed milk.

Various sorbets, most made with fruit canned in natural syrups, but the grape was made from welch's Concord grape juice and the watermelon was made from fresh watermelon.

I realized i haven't followed up on this post in a while even though I've been using the Creami often. Here's a simple one - cheap store brand chocolate milk, processed on "ice cream" and then chocolate syrup and chocolate chips added using the "mix-in' function. It was chocolaty. And tasty. And easy.

I guess that shows how long I've had my KK! I'm pretty sure I had to cut mine but now my confidence in that has taken a hit.

If you slit the rubber port plug lengthwise, you can slip the probe cables thru it without having to try to push the actual probes thru the hole. In case it's not clear what I mean by "lengthwise", looking at end of the plug where you can see the hole, you make it look like a "C" instead of an "O".

One of the cats licks me a lot; my brother said the cat is doing a taste test and I better keep an eye on him. I responded that if I die at home and I'm not found for several days, it gives me great comfort to know that the cats won't starve.

Back on topic! I'm not up to @tekobo standards yet, but add of this afternoon I have 9 containers in the freezer - overflowed one shelf and had to put two containers on another shelf. The ones in front are canned peaches and canned apricots, both in fruit juice. Also mixed up two containers of vanilla, one made with real sugar and the other with monk fruit. Had a half container of orange sherbet made with orange juice, half and half, and monk fruit as dessert this evening; no pic of that but it was very tasty!

Yep. I get their food and kitty litter from online vendors so one of my concerns is how I'm going to get the heavy cases of cat food and litter into the house without the cats getting out. I was planning on ordering enough the week to hold them over the whole 6 weeks but the main cat food was out of stock so I've had a mad scramble trying to find a replacement that they both will eat. The younger one claimed the one scooters as soon as I got thru in the house. They both hopped on the rollator walker before I got it out of the garage.

Another result from my misspent youth doing manual labor... Arthritis has pretty much ruined one of the joints in the middle of my foot. The podiatrist says it's considered a non-essential joint so he's gonna fuse it. Metal plate to hold it together and a bone graft from my heel to fill in the space and hopefully grow into both sides so its fuses. The surgery isn't considered particularly serious and should only take an hour or so, but I won't be able to put any weight on it for 6 weeks. I've been trying to get things ready so it's as easy as possible but since I live alone, there's things that are going to be frustrating to deal with. Well, I do live with two cats but they're not really helpful around the house!

Here's something the churning machines can't do - one ingredient pineapple sorbet! Very creamy and refreshing. Also had 6 more containers delivered today; gonna be another expensive trip to the grocery store this week. Not only do i have a list of ingredients for frozen stuff, gonna stock up on non-perishable stuff to make things easier for my 6 weeks of hopping around on one leg while recovering from my pending foot surgery. I guess I'm gonna get even fatter...

Me too. Somehow i always got stuck doing the churning until i bought an electric one. The electric one didn't take the fun out of it for me!

I actually have one of those but haven't used it in years for exactly the reasons you state. Eggs and sugar are the only ingredients I generally have on hand, plus you need rock salt which I don't have on hand. Add in the fact that I live alone, and using it turns into a special event for family gatherings. It always seems to take longer that I expect and requires constant monitoring to add ice. And then I'm left with quarts of ice cream that, even if I'm happy with the initial result, send to develop ice crystals when I put the leftovers in the freezer. The Creami let's me make a variety of flavors a pint or pint and a half at a time and I can stock multiple flavors and experiment without worrying about throwing out quarts of wasted ingredients when I have a failure. Plus the opportunity to make low calorie ice cream, sherbets, Italian ices, etc. Oh, by the way, I can fix anything I cook in my KK in my oven or cook top in doors and not have to mess with charcoal or deal with the weather! And my convection oven and induction cook top cost less combined than my KK!

I ran the rest of the chocolate milk "pint" on the "light ice cream" mode yesterday afternoon and the texture was even better but didn't get a pic. Spun the creamiccino this morning and made a mess but it was tasty. I meant to add cocoa powder to the mix brie freezing but forgot to:

Store-bought chocolate milk frozen and spun in the Creami Deluxe. Used the "top" setting so it only processed the top half.

"very similar to Dr. Pepper" - them's fighting words to Cheerwine fans! It's always been a bit too sweet for me, even before I quit soft drinks several years ago. I glass of it would probably melt my teeth now.

So I made the creamiccino (the non-copyrighted version of Starbuck's Frappuccino) yesterday as planned and split into 3 pre-frozen coffee travel mugs to take out to me mum's when I went with my sister to do mum's taxes returns. I've never had a genuine Frappuccino, but this was very good even with my fake cream. Good enough that I sort of wished I hadn't shared - the Creami Deluxe "pints" are actually a pint and a half (3 cups), and that 1 cup wasn't enough. My mother even liked it and she doesn't like cold coffee. My sister drove us and she arrived about 15 minutes earlier than expected so I didn't get pics. I've got my canned peaches and sweetened condensed milk "pint" and chocolate milk "pint" frozen and ready to process - just gotta decide which one to dig into after dinner - and I went ahead and prepared another creamiccino but made with real half&half and monk fruit sweetener (to cut down on the calories) and another orange sherbert scaled up to the full pint and a half and made with monk fruit, and orange juice. I can already see that the 4 "pints" that came with mine aren't gonna be enough. I ordered 2 additional "pints" the other day from HSN since they had a good price ($19.99) with free shipping but it looks like they're waiting on more stock. I went back to order at least 2 more but the free shipping is not longer available. Searched for other options but it looks like pretty much everybody (even the Ninja store and Amazon) are out of stock until late May.

@tekobo the Deluxe does have the option to mill just half of the container - you pick "top" or "bottom" instead of "full" like I did in the video. One of my aggravations is that I haven't found a guide on when to use which modes if you're not following one of the provided recipes; my understanding is that the paco-jet has limited speed options, but the Creami can very both the blade speed and the speed that the blade moves up and down thru the mixture so you can get very different results depending on which of the 11 modes you use. Gotta go to my mother's this afternoon to do her tax returns and then to meet some of my extended family for dinner so I'm planning on working up the creamiccino mix that I have ready to split between me, my sister, and my mom. The creamiccino is Ninja's version of the Starbucks frappuccino; we'll all just get a half pint but that'll be a taste. I have some travel coffee cups in the freezer to use so I'm hoping the drink doesn't thaw out too much but I'm a bit concerned it'll refreeze along the sides of the cups.

@tekobo that's an impressive number of prepped containers! My Creami came with 4 and I've ordered 2 more but they're delayed - everyone is having trouble keeping them in stock. I'm not sure about venturing into the savory side, but I do have some excess fresh basil. I found a recipe that had fresh basil and dill as the primary flavoring ingredients, so I may try that without the dill. I think basil and mint are related; I've not tried to grow any mint before since I haven't had any use for it but may have to try some in my indoor garden.

Mine arrived yesterday; of course, I didn't have anything ready to spin since I didn't have the "pints" which are actually a pint and a half for the Deluxe model. I also was short on ingredients - all I had was skim milk so I attempted to get done if it closer to cream by mixing in some butter. I found a simple Creami recipe for orange sherbet online (orange juice, heavy cream, milk, and sugar) and mixed that up with my simulated cream. I also used a recipe from the Ninja recipe book for a "creamiccino", which is their version of a frappuccino using coffee, half& half, and sugar so I mixed one of those up as well. I had an several errands to run this morning, including my weekly to to the grocery store where I stocked up on ingredients. After I got home, put the groceries up, and got the cats settled down, i spun the sherbet. I've linked to my amateur, totally unedited video of the process and attached a picture of the result and a picture of the cats (just because). The sherbet was pretty good, but I did start tasting the butter near the bottom of the bowl. I prepped up two more easy recipes for future use - one with a can of peaches and sweetened condensed milk and the other just store-bought chocolate milk. I'm having foot surgery in a couple of weeks and won't be able to put any weight on it for 6 weeks, so I'll have plenty of time to experiment and get fatter.

I finally found a negative review on YouTube. It's from America's Test Kitchen; I like their reviews but they do seem to have a bias against the more techie gadgets. Mine is out for delivery today; I have limited ingredients today but will certainly try to get something in the freezer to try tomorrow evening.

I have yet to see a review that was negative on the results after the reviewer made several "pints" and read the manual (and I've looked at a lot). Chief complaints were the price and the 24 hour lead time. Of course, most frequent users go ahead and get extra containers so they can have several varieties of frozen stuff in the freezer for when they want some. There are also a bunch of Facebook groups dedicated to it, with several for low calorie and/or keto recipes. That seems to be a big chunk of the market - those looking for low- or no-calorie frozen treats and those avoiding dairy. One good piece of advice I saw in a video is to get a wet erase marker to mark the "pints" with the contents so you don't lose track of what you have in the freezer.

@tony b, yours is doing more of a traditional churn than the Ninja. The Ninja is using a technology that's been available for professionals fit years - the patent ran out and Ninja jumped on it. It can do a wider variety of frozen deserts than the churners. Pretty much universal positive reviews (and not just Ninja fanatics). Here's an interesting video on the technology that compares the professional machine to the Ninja:

Anybody have a Ninja Creami? I've been craving ice cream lately and have been eyeing these for a while, so I made the leap when I found an OK price: https://www.ninjakitchen.com/ice-cream-makers/ And the pretty good deal: https://www.hsn.com/products/ninja-creami-deluxe-11-in-1-xl-frozen-treat-maker-with-/20677795?sz=5&sf=QC0016&ac=&utm_source=google&utm_medium=shopping engine&utm_term=&utm_campaign=Gshopping|BrandProduct|kitchen+food+kitchen+appliances&utm_content=147798559164_pla-1958140310773_20677796&pdp_exp=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwiZqhBhCJARIsACHHEH-9qPmt6XmVv3Oizu3lWWaKSkctxfqoVviQ6S90XFiW135WZVvn_lwaAhkbEALw_wcB Ninja is a bit confused on their definition of "pint" though...

I woke up early this morning with an inspiration; not sure where the idea came from but has anyone here tried rigging up a steam table and used a sous vide stick to heat the water instead of Sterno? I was thinking taking up a half or quarter pan slot, cover with aluminum foil (maybe with styrofoam backing) with a hole in it for the sous vide stick. A quick google didn't find anything on the interwebs; surely I didn't have an original idea!

Yes, for some values of "enough"... Just don't leave it blowing at full speed or you'll overshoot your target temp and not be able to get it back down to target temp.