Want ice cream in five minutes, with the perfect texture, no matter what you’re making it out of? Creamy sorbet from frozen apple juice? No problem. Want to turn the rest of your homemade raspberry sorbet into refreshing slushice? Easy.
The Ninja Creami Deluxe seemingly promises the impossible: speed and flexibility, no matter which ingredients you’re making ice cream out of. Typically, you have to wait up to an hour for a regular ice cream maker to cream your ice cream. And then you can forget about easy slushice.
The process
The ice cream should be in the freezer for 24 hours, so the system requires some preparation on your part.
I tried raspberry rosemary sorbet, frozen apple juice (because it was the easiest ‘recipe’ I could think of) and a classic ice cream with egg yolk, vanilla and chocolate chunks. When your ice cream mixture is ready, pour it into one of the three tubs provided and place it in the freezer. To make ice cream, place the tub directly into the Ninja Creamis container, which locks into place under the ‘blender’.
On the machine, you first need to choose how much ice cream you want to make. You can either make a full or half portion. A full batch of sorbet takes about five (noisy) minutes, and if the texture is a little crumbly, you can press “respin”, which helps a lot. The texture is just as creamy as the sorbet you buy at an expensive restaurant. There are no crunchy ice crystals or unevenly frozen pieces. ‘Respin’ typically takes an extra two minutes. Then you’re done and you can throw the tub back in the freezer or in the dishwasher. Cleaning is done in under two minutes.
Creami Deluxe has 10 built-in recipes, or rather textures. They are Ice Cream, Sorbet, Light Ice Cream, Gelato, Milkshake, Mix-In, Frappe, Frozen Drink, Slushi & Frozen Yoghurt.
If you want fresh berries or chocolate chips, add them at the end and the “mix-in” programme spreads the ingredients around the ice cream without massacring them.
If you want to make a drinkable recipe such as slushice, add water (or tequila!) to the top of the container before blending. The texture will be like only 7-Eleven can make it on a hot summer day.
Drawbacks of the system?
The biggest disadvantage of Ninja Creami is the noise. You really become aware of how long a minute lasts when using the machine. Therefore, it’s not ideal to use late at night if you don’t want to wake up everyone in the house. Additionally, the capacity is smaller than the typical ice cream maker. One container can hold 709ml. If you’re making something drinkable, there also needs to be room to pour liquid on top, which means even less volume.
On the other hand, as mentioned, you get three containers, and you can of course buy more if you want. And with the machine making ice as fast as it does, serving lots of people is no problem as long as you remember to fill and freeze the tubs 24 hours in advance.
Conclusion
The Ninja Creami Deluxe introduces a whole new way of making ice cream. The technology is convincingly practical in the home, which is not always the case with technology originating from the professional world. The Creami Deluxe manages to produce a texture as soft and delicious as a traditional ice cream maker.
Most importantly, it’s fast. The noise may be a challenge for some, but that’s the price you pay for the brutal approach. The variations alone, especially slushice, give the Ninja Creami Deluxe an advantage over most “regular” ice cream machines. Once you get used to having a few different ice cream flavours in the freezer beforehand, it’s hard to go back to a regular ice cream maker. The Ninja Creami Deluxe is simply smarter.
