Ice cream taste test pits Lancaster native's device against kitchen appliance giant [column] [video] (2024)

  • October 27, 2024
  • 55°

  • KEVIN STAIRIKER | Digital Staff

Good ice cream is like a favorite song – when the feeling hits, you want it, no matter the season.

The appeal of a countertop ice cream maker for home use is exactly that, capturing the idea that someone could have access to ice cream on demand. Recently, Garden Spot High School grad Josh Stuckey unveiled the newest version of a machine he has been tinkering with for years, the Tern Craft Ice Cream Maker. The machine is used to make servable ice cream (or gelato, or frozen custard) with as many different ingredients as your imagination can provide.

As a lifelong disciple of the cold and creamy, I jumped at a chance to compare the Tern to a big box store equivalent, the Cuisinart ICE-20 Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream and Sorbet Maker. While the ICE-20 is no longer available, Cuisinart’s line of ice cream and sorbet makers are one of Tern’s primary competitors, Stuckey said.

Before the trial even began, there were numerous similarities that jumped out immediately. Both machines contain a crucial piece that makes the process a little less impulsive, though necessary – a freezer bowl that must be frozen in zero-degree temperatures for at least eight hours. Both bowls contain cooling liquid on the inside that keeps the bowls nice and cold while you’re operating the machines. The ice cream makers also rely on a spinning mechanism to keep the ingredients moving so the ingredients immediately freeze to the insides of the bowls. At the end of each process, both machines should leave you with at least a quart of ice cream, if not a quart and a quarter.

For my ice cream test, I wanted to keep things simple, so I settled on a classic vanilla ice cream base and added in crushed up chocolate cookies for a familiar cookies ‘n’ cream style. The ingredient list is as small as you might imagine for something easy, simply adding whole milk, sugar, heavy cream, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt before adding the crushed up cookies later in the process. It’s only once the ingredients have been added and the machines spinning that subtle differences in the two machines begin to show.

Going head-to-head

First, with the Cuisinart, the manual says that the process will take roughly 20 to 25 minutes. The ICE-20 has a plastic insert that serves as a self-mixer, keeping the ice cream from settling in one place for too long. While most of the ice cream mixture did safely make the rounds throughout the process, a solid chunk of cream and sugar stayed in one place for most of the test and was only dislodged after I poked a spoon at it briefly. Nevertheless, at the end of the 20 minutes, I still had a perfectly serviceable cup of ice cream.

While the Cuisinart sports a large, clear plastic cover, presumably to prevent mess, there is no such cover on the Tern, which initially had me nervous that the spinning function would cause ice cream ingredients to fly out in every direction. However, once it started spinning, that proved not to be the case. Whereas the Cuisinart spins the ice cream for you, the Tern requires the user hand churn the mixture with a large plastic spoon even as the bowl spins mechanically.

The combination hand and mechanical mixing method of the Tern would wind up being a decisive difference-maker. While the Cuisinart leaves you to watch helplessly as ingredients are mashed about randomly with the plastic insert, the Tern forces you to be captain of your own ice cream ship. Both ice cream makers run on a spinning mechanism, though Tern’s appears a hair faster to the eye. This was ultimately a huge difference maker, as I felt like the Tern wound up creating a smoother, more mixed-together final product. It should also be noted that, although the Tern manual list a specific creation timetable, I had ready-to-go ice cream in 10 minutes, half the time as the Cuisinart.

So, the big question – which is better? While the end result – delicious, creamy cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream – was more or less the same from both machines, I think the slight edge goes to the Tern for both speed and the personal touch of having to churn by hand.

In the end, though, it’s ice cream – if you ever find yourself with a cup or a scoop, regardless of how it got to you, you’re winning no matter what.

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Ice cream taste test pits Lancaster native's device against kitchen appliance giant [column] [video] (2024)
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