Aldi is selling this Stirling ice cream maker with compressor (it has a built in freezer unit so you don't need to prefreeze a freezing bowl). The price is less than half the price of any other ice cream maker with compressor that I am aware of. The 1L capacity is a bit small but when you have made one batch you can scoop it out and make another one. The cost for me was $129 + $6.99 shipping + $0.68 card fee.
Some Bargain recipe options:
- Buy cream whenever you see it on clearance (usually 60c or so) and freeze til required (gets heated in the custard process anyway)
- blend any excess in-season fruit (e.g. watermelon, grapes, citrus, add minimal sugar and make sorbets
- use your home-made yoghurt (see any of the easiyo post comments about doing it on the cheap) to get froyo
- flavour your yoghurt with fruit blended (or frozen when you have excess).
- If you have chickens, no egg cost, or make friends with and trade with people who have excess chicken eggs
You can get it down to approx $1/litre plus running costs, meaning you'd potentially make back your money in around 30 uses.
Cool so you don't value labour at anything ?
Not really, it'd be comparable to the portion of time i'd allocate for shopping for it. Sometimes I shop simply for icecream, if it's on special enough/high enough cravings.
Timewise, blend fruit 1min or make yoghurt 1-2mins, pour in machine, press start, 1 min, rinse bowl+ blade, 2 mins. Not much labour imo.
I bang out a multi batch base in a lazy 20 mins at most while doing other stuff in the kitchen.
Then the churning is something I do in ad breaks or while watching a movie.
Hate washing the containers though. Introduced a "no say in flavour unless you wash the empty container" policy recently. Waiting to see how it pans out.
What flavours do you usually make?
@Embaloo: Vanilla, choc chip, mint chip cookies and cream, baileys fudge, choc, choc orange, butterscotch, bubblegum, salted Caramel. Whatever I want to work out I usually play around with until I am happy and add it to the options.
Need to work on some fruit options.
Thanks Shitforbrains!
May I ask how long it takes to freeze to make ice cream after putting all ingredients?
Prechill your ingrediants for at least 2 hrs (eg the custard). Churning in my Cuisinart ice cream maker takes around 40 mins to get it sufficiently thick enough to then freeze. You could eat after 40 mins but I find the icecream is still too soft.
You churn to a soft serve consistency then fully chill in the fridge.
I chill my base right down untill it starts to set.on the surface then stick blend it smooth and into a pre chilled churn. That gives me 20 to 30 mins to churn in a breville.
Any later buyer's had order confirmation on their order status. Did mine yesterday mid arvo. Assume as holidays and still being processed
Item arrived today whoohoo
Received mine today in Melb too. Just need to pick up the ingredients next supermarket trip to give it a try
Received mine also yesterday in Melbourne. No experience but here is what I did to get my first batch out. I was not interested (just yet) in spending hours making a custard base and pre-chilling etc so went for the following quick recipe.
Vanilla
1 x 300ml Cream (Just the normal thickened cream)
1 x 300ml Full cream Milk (I just refilled the empty cream bottle)
1/2 cup of Caster sugar
Pinch of Salt
Just under 1 Tablespoon of Vanilla Essence
I hand whisked all together for a couple of minutes (just until the sugar was dissolved)
Next pour in to the Ice Cream Maker bucket
Put the bucket in the machine and ensure you have the churning paddle in place and lock in the lid
Then turn on the Machine (button on the lower left side. The Ice Cream icon on the far right should be flashing) & press start (button on the lower right hand side)
The first batch finished in approx 40 minutes. You will hear the Ice Cream machine start to labour as the Ice Cream thickens. The Ice cream maker will then beep several times when done. The Ice cream was of a thick soft serve consistency & delicious. I then transferred to a container and placed in the Freezer.
End to end it took approx 45 minutes including prep time
Next I will experiment with adding Crushed Oreo's, Crunchie Bar, M&M's etc etc Maybe a Baileys or Kahlua for the adults.
**Important: Whatever you put in to the Ice Cream maker will expand. For this machine do not put more than 750ml of combined ingredients
Hope this helps
Very good detailed review. Thank you very much.
Leaving it in the machine chills it (when it's on the default setting of going ti chill) to harden too (similar to an hour or two in the freezer.
got the machine made one batch of ice cream yesterday, all good.
now its making 10 beeping sound when using it, is it already faulty anyone knows?
Check that you have the lid locked in correctly. You need to align to the markings on top of the machine. The churning paddle should also spin when locked in correctly.
The lid only has two positions lock and unlock, I checked it’s in locked position as it could hear a final click sound, the paddle turns fine, for both Mixing and Churning modes, both work fine for the first few seconds, followed by 10 beeping sound and happens after every few seconds afterwards eventually the machine would finish/stop the current cycle after couple of mins and reset to main menu and the paddle would stop.
Called the Tech Support number was told they don’t have the product knowledge and would need to get back to me next week.
The lid can be put on 2 ways. Please check that you have the arrow on the top of the lid pointing to the Unlock position (at about 2 o'clock) then click right to the lock position (at 3 o'clock). The reason I say this is because I made this error the very first time I turned the unit on and it beeped the way you have described. May be something else but worth checking….
@MaMan: was your paddle moving though? the only way for paddle to spin is to lock the lid in the right position where the two connectors underneath the lid would connect to the main machine.
in saying that checked the arrow is sure pointing to the locked (3 oclock) position.
@UncleCheapSteam: The only thing I can think of is to check page 10 of your manual. It refers to the bowl and lid being installed correctly and if not the unit will beep for around 5 minutes before going in to standby mode. Sorry but maybe a fault with your unit….
@MaMan: yeah i did read that section, tried many ways of installing the bowls and lid properly still not working, contacting aldi for replacement or refund
not sure if i can bring the machine to my local store or refund.
Any update?
Been testing for days issue seems to be pretty random. Contacted the support again was told the beeping sound is to do with the mixture in the bowl not being even, which I do not agree.
So I have the following tricks to make it work, I just try them one by one and eventually will work.
-open the lid, close the lid again
-take out the bowl, rotate the bowl and put it back
-manually turn the peddle while it’s still connected to the lid, rotate clockwise with medium force a few turns, then anti clockwise
If all above failed, just press the stop button when it beeps and press the same button to start again, do it around 10 times, machine will continue to work.
So far have made around 10 batches out of this machine using above techniques, great machine otherwise, will probably bring it back to store for full refund before my 60 days.
Helpful review thanks! Sucks about the inconvenience.
Unfortunately I didn't get the item today eventhough I was at home, item was schedule to be delivered today but the delivery driver said no one was at home, which is a bs!
Any update? And any good recipes you've tried?
I received my unit this Monday after a lot of hassles from the freight company. Packaging arrived damaged but the item inside looks in good condition. I am yet to try and make an ice creame. It will be tomorrow and will let you know.
Awesome! Hope there's no damage. Keep all the pics!
@Embaloo: Yup definitely took pictures and going to try your recipes and suggestions. I am keen to make pistachio ice cream. I will let you know how it goes.
Great machine! Thanks OP!
Have made two exquisite cheats icecreams with materials that were past their expiry in my fridge, but still smelled great (cream and milk and mangoes).
Cream + pulp of 2 mangoes, straight in the icecream maker with a shake of sugar and some milk. SO Good!!
I didn't even measure stuff out, just guessed, except the final 750mL into the maker.
With the leftover cream, 300mL expired but still good milk, 1/3 cup cocoa powder, 2 tsp vanilla extract & pinch of salt, half cuo white and third cup brown sugar, just firmer than soft serve icecream.
SO good.
The second one I made seemed a bit firmer, maybe because the maker was still cold (made one after rather other).
I also just used cleaned yoghurt containers to put the leftovers in. No need for fancy tubs or anything.
Review:
Simple
Delicious
Cheap
No need to buy fancy ingredients
No preservatives
Hopefully can on-sell if it becomes a paperweight.
FInally made pistachio ice cream. It was delicious :)
Ingredients:-
300 ml full cream milk
300 ml thickened cream
castor sugar - according to taste or you can just turn white sugar in powder by using a mixer spice jar.
50 gms Pistachio crushed - can be adjusted less or more
10 gms cardamom crushed - can be adjusted less or more
Tested my unit today and worked perfectly. Delicious matcha ice cream in under two hours with 5 minutes of preparation to mix cream, milk, matcha powder, vanilla, sugar.
Much more convenience than my machine without the compressor which requires freezing the bowl for 24 hours.
Awesome!!
Where do you get reasonably priced matcha powder?
Should be in any Asian grocery store as they usually sell a mix of Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc products. We went to KT Mart in Melbourne
Cool thanks. What's a good price?
Really high end ones that haven so much got a basket as a hole on top. Most baskets are aluminium for the thermal transfer.