Satisfied

An ice cream maker was not a necessity in our kitchen, but we thought it would be a fun addition for our kitchenaid HD mixer. It has handled ice cream and gelato well, taking about half an hour or so of mixing. We just store the bowl in the freezer for the next time we want to use it. One of the benefits of the bowl attachment is not adding an extra appliance around the house that takes up room and has another motor that might break.

A couple reviewers noticed a clicking noise after their ice cream had been mixing for a while. That's a handy feature that built in to the device. Once the ice cream gets thick enough, the mixer paddle will start to audibly click, letting you know that it should be done.

Keep this in the freezer- then, it will always be ready when you are. Make sure the mixture you pour in is very cold. Before turning on the machine, wrap saran wrap around the top to help keep the cold temperature of your mixture. If your kitchen is even slightly warm while this is trying to freeze your mixture -you will end up with slush. The key is to place this in the coldest room of your home (mine is the laundry room with the dryer off, of course). Let it continuously run for at least 25 minutes and don't peek under the saran wrap or Glad wrap. The Silver Spoon cookbook has great gelato recipes for this machine and other ice cream makers. I wish they sold the attachment for $50 -that would make it a great value and extra nice accessory for one's Kitchen Aid. The Krups Glaciere is also very good if you have room in your kitchen pantry or closet for one more kitchen gadget. Otherwise, purchase this when on sale and always keep in the freezer.

Performs Well; Don't Rely on Included Recipes

I purchased the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment to pair with my KitchenAid Artisan mixer. Based on reviews I read here and elsewhere, I chose this model over a stand-alone ice cream maker because I anticipated it would make reasonably good ice cream and would relieve me from purchasing another countertop appliance. Overall, I am pleased with the purchase. It took me some time to get used to, but after making three recipes, I got the hang of it.

The device performed as advertised, producing soft-serve ice cream in about 30 minutes. I found that 2-quart recipes worked best, because these recipes filled the freeze bowl. Recipes for smaller quantities worked fine and froze more quickly (about 20 minutes), but I think the texture suffered (perhaps due to the quick freeze time).

You do have to make sure the freeze bowl is very cold; I found that freezing it for 24-48 hours at the coldest freezer setting provided about 25-30 minutes of working time to make the ice cream. After 30 minutes, the freeze bowl reached the temperature of the batter (i.e., the ice cream ingredients in the freeze bowl) and letting it run beyond that time only resulted in melting of (rather than freezing of) the batter.

While running, the mixer is fairly loud and my mixer made some noises that suggested it might not have enough horsepower to do the job, but so far all has gone well. I would be curious to see if the attachment works more quietly or differently on the more powerful mixers that KitchenAid makes.

The recipes included with the attachment were very disappointing. For one, the custard recipes, if followed to the letter, will fail to produce properly formed custard. Also, I thought the proportions were not as flavorful as those in recipes I found elsewhere on the Internet.

I didn't have any trouble setting up the dasher (i.e., the ice cream

Easy Peasy!

Loved this attachment for my mixer. I've been wanting to make homemade ice
cream again, for a long time but just couldn't justify the cost of an electric ice cream maker. When I saw this one, it sounded perfect and it worked with
something I already had.

I liked not having to mess with ice and salt and I used a recipe my mother
gave me years ago - it turned out perfect!

Of course, you have to make sure the attachment is completely frozen
before doing another batch of ice cream but I didn't feel that was a big deal.

I made the Triple Chocolate Chunk IC form the recipe book that came with the icecream attachment. The Ic turned out great-very rich. The process was just a bit messy. The drive assembly and dasher are kinda tricky. When the IC started freezing, the mechanism started to click (maybe the two pieces were not fully engaged).