Using the Sunbeam Snowy

Just recently I got given a Sunbeam Snowy and tried out by making one of the ice cream recipes in the manual.

The first thing I realised with this when I read the manual is that this product requires a lot of forethought and preperation. The most obvious thing is that the freezer canister needs to be placed in the freezer for 24 hours. Personally I just stuck this into the beer fridge, and will probably keep it in the beer fridge between uses, but if you don’t have a spare freezer the canister can take a lot of room in your freezer.

The next thing that takes patience more than forethough is that some of the ice cream mixtures are cooked, usually at nearly boiling tempreature. Before this mixture can be used in the ice cream maker it needs to be cooled. For me I chilled my mixture in a bowl of ice, and then in the fridge. All up it was probably 2~3 hours to cool the mixture.

Actually making the ice cream is just a matter of pouring the mixture into the machine. Basically the machine continually stirs the mixture as it cools. The mixture is ready when the machine can no longer stir the mixture.

I found that the ice cream is pretty good, but I thought that it needed a bit of time in the freezer for the ice cream to properly set. So far I have only tried one ice cream recipe and I will have to try a couple of others.

So if you are prepared for a bit of planning you can make your own ice cream. I think it would be quite a good thing to make with kids, but be prepared to wait for the mixture to cool and the canister to freeze.