We Tried It: Cuisinart FastFreeze Frozen Treat Maker With Pints
We whipped up ice cream, fro-yo, and milkshakes using the TikTok-famous device to find out if it’s worth the hype
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Life can be hard, but ice cream makes things better. While there’s no need to upsell ice cream, the task of making your own frozen desserts at home takes a little more convincing. Most ice cream makers are fun to use and perfect for experimenting with distinctive ingredients (trust me, honey pistachio is a genius combo)—but these gadgets are often also bulky, annoying to clean, and difficult to store.
Enter the Cuisinart FastFreeze Frozen Treat Maker with Pints. This adorably compact ice cream maker boasts TikTok clout; comes in shades like pink, daffodil, and poppy; and promises to make ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and milkshakes in mere minutes. We tried it out for a week to bring you all of the details you need to decide whether it’s right for you.
And if you’re on the fence about buying the Cuisinart or its equally popular rival, the Ninja Creami Ice Cream Maker (which CR tested), we’ll clue you in on whether it’s worth spending nearly double the price for the Ninja Creami.
Cuisinart FastFreeze Basics
The FastFreeze comes with a power handle (resembling a wand), a mixing assembly (the base of the unit where the blade is located), three half-pint cups with lids, and an instruction manual featuring 12 recipes to get you started. Its measurements are 16.25x4.5x9 inches (LxWxD), which is smaller than the Ninja Creami, which measures 12.07x6.52x15.95 inches (LxWxH).
I could easily see people with ample counterspace leaving the FastFreeze out without much interference because it’s smaller than most coffee makers. It weighs approximately 6 pounds and comes with a three-year warranty. I purchased the gadget in a serene mint shade, which, at the time of publication, doesn’t appear to be in stock, but you can snag it in a few other colors.
How to Use the FastFreeze
The machine couldn’t be easier to use. Its recipe book includes basics like vanilla ice cream and more elaborate options like cookies and cream ice cream, strawberry and banana sorbet, and dulce de leche milkshakes. You must be patient and willing to prepare ice cream and sorbets in advance (milkshakes can be made on the spot, though). That’s because you’ll have to add all of your ingredients to the half-pint cups the day before, allow them to freeze for 24 hours, and then use the machine to make your treats.
Take the cups out of the freezer 10 minutes before you’re ready to transform them into the dessert of your choice, remove the lid, attach the cup to the mixing assembly so that its blade hovers above the mixture, click the power handle into the mixing assembly base, plug it in, choose your preset, and press the start button. That’s it.
Applying a little pressure to the handle will cause it to move downward faster into the cup, but I wouldn’t push too hard; it doesn’t require force and you don’t want to break the machine.
Cuisinart’s FastFreeze whipped our cookies-and-cream mixture into soft serve in minutes, and its add-ins setting lets you easily mix in cookies, candy, and more.
When the light indicator on the handle turns from green to red, it indicates that the blade has reached the bottom of the cup and is finished churning your ice cream, sorbet, milkshake, or slushy. It took about a minute and a half for the button to turn red when I made ice cream and sorbet, and about 30 seconds when making the milkshake.
If you want to add in ingredients like chocolate chips or cookies, wait until the ice cream-making session is complete, untwist the half-pint cup from the mixing assembly, toss your add-ins into the cup, attach the cup to the mixer again, and select the “add-ins” preset before pressing the start button. This preset crushed Oreo cookies into my ice cream in a way that resembled store-bought cookies and cream. The machine emitted a low buzzing sound, but nothing like the loud “leafblower” racket our Ninja Creami reviewer reported experiencing when testing ice cream makers.
As with any new gadget, mistakes are inevitable. I tested the FastFreeze by making three desserts (actually, I let my kids choose): The winners were cookies and cream ice cream, strawberry banana sorbet, and dulce de leche milkshake, which I substituted with caramel syrup because I had a full bottle in the fridge.
Despite reading the instructions and knowing better, I pressed my luck by filling up one of the cups beyond the maximum line indicated. The mixing assembly would not attach to the cup because I had overfilled it, so I had to wait for it to thaw a bit, scoop enough of the frozen ingredients out to reach the maximum line, and try re-attaching it to the mixing assembly. The cup fit perfectly.
Don’t fill the dessert cup past the max line—otherwise, the mixing assembly won’t attach properly.
