VonShef stainless steel ice cream maker

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How easy is the VonShef stainless steel ice cream maker to use?

VonShef recommends pre-freezing the bowl for a minimum of eight hours, which is faster than most models. Despite its large bowl capacity, it fit into the freezer with ease.

Putting it together was a little fiddly. You need to assemble the housing around the bowl, rather than just dropping it in, so once we removed the bowl from the freezer it became a race against time to assemble everything and get the machine going before the bowl began to defrost. There are no satisfying clicks to indicate that everything is in place, so its difficult to tell if you’ve assembled the machine properly.

We liked that the top portion of the housing doubled as a handle for the ice cream bowl, protecting our hands.

The manual is a little vague; it says it takes 15-20 minutes to churn, with no specifics differentiating ice cream or sorbet. There aren’t any recipes either, which would definitely have been useful.

Results

We made our ultimate vanilla ice cream and lemon sorbet to test the VonShef. We let it run for 15 minutes when making the vanilla ice cream, then checked on the progress. A design flaw of this model is the black lid. It’s not only fun, but also useful, to be able to check on the progress of your ice cream when its churning. Unfortunately, we needed to dismantle the machine to be able to peek at the progress.

After checking the ice cream, we felt it wasn’t quite firm enough, so let it run for another five minutes. By then, the ice cream had was soft-serve with a few visible ice crystals. It had a soft, whipped texture, thanks to the reversible motor that turned the paddle in both directions. It was ready to eat straight away. There was around a 3mm build-up of thick ice cream on the inner bowl, which proved quite difficult to remove.

We didn’t have as much success when making a lemon sorbet, whilst it was cloudy and whipped as expected, the sorbet was very soft set and not firm enough to use straight away. We had to stop the machine at the 35-minute mark as the bowl was beginning to thaw. The flavour was great though, despite a slight gritty texture. After 24 hours in the freezer, the sorbet was much better, slow melting and light.

Conclusion

If you’re someone who likes to plan ahead, this VonShef model is best suited to the organised on a budget. Whilst ice cream was ready to serve, sorbet needed a blast in the freezer before eating.

This is a small and compact model, so easy to store. Do be aware that it makes a loud mechanical whirring sound when in use, but it’s quick, so you won’t need to endure the noise too long.

It’s a simple machine that’s easy to use. Don’t expect much from the manual as there are no recipes, but if you’re prepared to do a little research, you can make some fantastic ice cream.

Available from Von Haus £44.99

Specifications

Wattage: 12
Pre-freeze or self-freezing: pre-freeze
Accessories: N/A
Pre-set functions: none
Dimensions (cm): H: 31 x W: 24 x D: 23.6
Bowl capacity: 2L

Ice cream recipes

Ultimate vanilla ice cream
Strawberry ice cream
Vegan vanilla ice cream
Buttermilk, brown sugar and rye bread ice cream
Malt chocolate ice cream
Cranachan ripple ice cream
Gooseberry ice cream

Sorbet recipes

Mango sorbet
Raspberry sorbet
Elderflower sorbet
Lemon sorbet
Rhubarb and star anise sorbet
Gooseberry, elderflower and sauvignon sorbet
Refreshing lychee and lime sorbet

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This review was last updated in April 2021. If you have any questions, suggestions for future reviews or spot anything that has changed in price or availability please get in touch at goodfoodwebsite@immediate.co.uk