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The 9 Best Ice Cream Makers for Homemade Frozen Treats

The ultimate appliance for indulging this summer.

best ice cream makers Staff

By Rachel Klein

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If you want to save some cash and get creative with flavor-making—plus always have exceptional ice cream on hand at home—invest in your own ice cream maker. You can get a high-quality model for well under $100 or spend a bit more on a machine with a compressor for instant ice cream satisfaction. Read on for our recommendations of the best ice cream makers on the market to suit every budget.

While this 1.5-quart ice cream maker may be on the pricey side, it’s superior performance, lineup of features, and attractive design make it our top pick. 

There are 12 hardness settings to make everything from creamy sorbet to thick rocky road, plus it keeps your creation frozen to perfection for 3 hours. It’s made of stainless steel, with a display panel on top that’s easy to read and extremely intuitive. For those who like toppings mixed in, you can program it to beep at the ideal time to add the goods.

This ice cream maker requires storing the mixing bowl in the freezer in advance, which may be a dealbreaker for some, but it offers solid value and performance. It’s also a customer favorite, with an average 4.7 stars from more than 13,700 reviewers. 

Once the 1.5-quart double-insulated freezer bowl is ready to go—there’s a large spout to make adding ingredients easy—it turns out your favorite flavor in 20 minutes or less. In addition to white, the ice cream maker is available in several fun colors, including vibrant red, bright yellow, and pretty pink.  

If you can spend a little more, this Cuisinart ice cream maker is a step up from the model above, with a 2-quart capacity, a LCD control panel with several speeds and three settings, plus a countdown timer and auto-shutoff. It also has a sleeker look, with a brushed metal exterior, a tall silhouette that’s a little over a foot, and a base that’s well under 10 inches in length and width. Other highlights include a wide ingredient spout with a built-in measuring cup, plus it comes with a recipe book.

This ice cream maker is a serious upgrade from the above models because it has a fully automatic, commercial quality compressor—which essentially means ice cream on demand. You can create multiple flavors in the 1.5-quart ice cream maker, one right after the next, with a 60-minute countdown timer. 

There are separate paddles for ice cream and gelato—all parts are BPA-free—and a feature that keeps your frozen treat at prime temperature 10 minutes after the timer goes off.

Whynter’s automatic ice cream maker with a high-efficiency compressor is a true standout in terms of value for the price. It has an impressive 2.1-quart capacity, made of durable stainless steel, with BPA-free blades and a removable mixing bowl. There are three modes for making ice cream, mixing in ingredients, and cooling, a built-in audible timer, plus it has an auto-shutoff cooling function to protect it from damage. Another bonus is that for a machine of its capacity, it has a relatively small footprint to save counter space.

For serious ice cream enthusiasts with money to spend, look no further than this top-of-the-line machine, made by Italian brand Musso. The compression ice cream maker has a 1.5-quart capacity, but is capable of churning out 3 quarts per hour—of what might be the most dense, rich, and creamy ice cream it’s possible to make at home. 

It’s fully automatic, with a simple, LCD control panel that has a timer and pause button. It’s attractive and streamlined, with gleaming stainless steel body, but what may be a drawback for some is that behemoth—at 18 inches deep and 38 pounds.  

For the look of an old-fashioned ice cream maker with the modern convenience of electricity, this option from Elite Gourmet is your best bet. It also makes four quarts of ice cream at once, making it a great choice for using at barbecues and parties this summer. 

It’s crafted from galvanized metal, giving it an old-fashioned look while still being easy to clean. There’s a wide mixing spatula and powerful motor to churn enough ice cream for a crowd in about 40 minutes.

If you’re willing to put in the elbow grease, this option will recreate the experience of hand-churning homemade ice cream. It may be on the pricey side, but it’s the kind of appliance that’s built to last, made of all-stainless steel hardware—including the gears and housing—plus it has a triple-lay construction for excellent insulation and durability. It’s also completely charming, with a lovely green tub and ice cream cone on the front. 

Fun fact: “immergood” means “always good” in German.

Soft serve lovers will rarely say no to a scoop of hard ice cream (I mean, it’s still ice cream) but for diehards, nothing compares to the creamy consistency of a twist in a cone. 

This 1.5-quart Cuisinart ice cream maker turns out soft serve in about 20 minutes and is ultra-appealing, with designated bins for toppings and a side tray to stack ice cream cones. It requires putting a double-insulated bowl in the freezer for cooling in advance, but parts are removable for easy cleaning. 

To dispense the ice cream, do it like the pros do at your local ice cream shop: Simply pull down the handle and give it a swirl.