We have a hand-crank Donvier we got when we were married in 1995 that is almost constantly in use from about the 4th of July to mid-September. (The brand-name one is overpriced. Get a clone, which can be had for under $20 on sale.) DH wants an electric and I may get him one for his birthday (which is 2 days after Christmas LOL) if end-of-summer sales yield any REALLY good prices on reliable machines. Here's the base recipe we use, from the Ben & Jerry's book... I don't think you could GET any simpler, and it's surprisingly good. We pretty much never use a custard base because our kitchen is not air conditioned, and diddling around making custard in a 90-odd degree kitchen is officially Not Worth It in our book. For a 1 quart ice cream maker, combine 1 can sweetened, condensed milk (many of us remember it as "Eagle milk") with 2 cups light cream, a splash of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Do NOT leave out the salt! Stir well, chill at least 2 hours before putting in the ice cream maker. You can substitute full-fat ("cream top") vanilla yogurt for half the cream but it doesn't really save you much calorically, just does interesting things to the flavor and can make you feel a little virtuous LOL! Lower-fat yogurts give a strange chalky texture and unsweetened yogurt makes for very sour product. (Found from unpleasant experience that just chucking a quart of yogurt straight from the container into the ice cream maker, no matter how yummy it is normally, does not make nice frozen yogurt, oh no not at all!) There's a simple plain base, now start playing... A super easy way to get a delicious fruity flavor ice cream is to substitute 1 cup of a good strong jam for 1 cup of the cream. (I don't recommend doing both jam and yogurt and eliminating all the cream. The result came out... the only word I can find for it is "stretchy".) The jam concentrates the fruit's flavor; warm "seedy" jams like raspberry or blackberry until they're liquidy and push them through a strainer if you don't want to be picking seeds out of your teeth for days. If you want fruit pieces, line a cookie sheet with the nonstick foil or baking parchment (or a Silpat if you're blessed with one), spread out a layer of finely chopped fruit with the pieces not touching, or minimally touching, and freeze rock solid. Add the fruit pieces at the very end of churning. Toast any nuts you wish to add for a stronger, "nuttier" flavor; and grating frozen chocolate bars on the largest holes of a grater (use an oven mitt to hold the chocolate so your body heat doesn't melt it) gives a better result IMO than using chocolate chips, even the mini kind. If you want to use something like butterscotch chips, freeze them and break them up in small batches in a food processor on "pulse". Good use for one of those mini-chopper types. Remember that your liquid ice cream/sorbet/yogurt mixture has to be almost sickeningly-sweet in its unfrozen state to taste "normal" as a finished product - the cold numbs your taste buds so all the flavors have to be STRONG. Oh, and filling the churning chamber more than about 2/3 full, 3/4 at the most, can be a recipe for a Big Sticky Mess. So don't do it. Honey-sweetened ice cream does not store well more than 24 hours - it gets crumbly and weird-textured, so if you want to do something with honey, have enough people around to scarf it down within hours of curing. Alcohol will interfere in the solidifying process so if you really load it up even with an overnight cure you may not get more than a "soft serve" texture. We bought a whole slew of nice little (not quite 1/2 cup) lidded plastic containers into which we portion the ice cream while it's still in the "soft serve" state. Pop them in the freezer and in 4 hours it's solidified enough to have the proper ice cream "mouthfeel", although I like 8 hours' curing time. If we don't pre-portion it DH will go WAY overboard! Oh, and the famous Mark Bittman/New York Times "eggless ice cream" was IMNSHO utterly REVOLTING.

Bellsmom, Ice cream freezers are a pretty mature technology, and Cuisinart isn't likely to turn belly up during your warranty period, so why not? :) I like that the 100 has the different paddles, though I don't know how big a difference it makes. I donated counter space that wasn't all that useful anyway to mine, but I wish it did a magic appear/disappear act. :) Yours should be fine in the pantry if you have a solid counter and a plug. It's sure to vibrate a lot and needs some clear space for the circulation of warm air (i.e., not right up against your foodstuffs because they want cool pantry, and a freezer will warm it up). Those are the biggest problems with putting it in the pantry. Do you have a laundry room where you could put it? Maybe keep a cloth over it when not in use to keep away lint, etc. Or even a protected porch? The lack of water shouldn't be a big issue because of the removable bowl. You can take all the main parts to the sink for cleaning (maybe keep a little dishpan with the machine to dump them in, and just bring a sponge or rag and a small bowl (or the dishpan) of water to the machine for wiping it down. Kids love making frozen treats, and it's also a great way to teach them about what's in what they're eating. Be really honest with yourself, however. Do you really want to be carrying the ingredients back and forth? And the clean-up? Would you rather have it on the kitchen counter? Would giving up freezer space be no issue because you'd be using the space you usually fill with bought ice cream for the bowl of a non-freezer model? Will you use it more if it's just ready to go? Will you use it less if you have to unearth the bowl from a pile of stuff in the freezer? I know the arias are beautiful, but imagine yourself doing the conducting. Read through the instructions online and imagine yourself doing the work. See which model you'd really rather have to fit into your real life and way of doing things, and your particular cooking setup. You're already well informed. That's the next good step to making a choice.

Terri, here are a couple of my favorites from GB. This one was posted by Jain. > Lavender-Blueberry Ice Cream 1 cup blueberries, rinsed 3/4 cup sugar 2 tablespoons dried culinary lavender blossoms 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon vanilla 3 cups half-and-half Preparation 1. In a 1- to 1 1/2-quart pan over medium-high heat, stir blueberries, sugar, and 1/2 cup water until berries begin to pop, 4 to 5 minutes. Pour mixture through a fine strainer set over a bowl. Pour blueberries into a blender. Return berry syrup to pan. 2. Add lavender to syrup and stir over medium heat until syrup is infused with flavor, about 5 minutes. Strain into blender, pressing to extract liquid. Discard lavender. 3. Add cinnamon and vanilla to blender; whirl until mixture is smooth. Pour into a bowl, nest in ice water, and stir often until cold, about 15 minutes. Stir in half-and-half. 4. Pour chilled mixture into an ice cream maker (1 1/2-qt. or larger capacity). Freeze according to manufacturer's directions until firm enough to scoop. Serve, or transfer to a container and freeze, airtight, up to 1 week. My personal favorite from Maryel. I always double the recipe! Ben and Jerry`s Orange Cream Dream Ice Cream Ingredients: 1/3 cup Orange juice concentrate; thawed 2 teaspoons Vanilla 2 cups Heavy or whipping cream 3/4 cup Sugar 2/3 cup Half and half Directions: Pour the cream into a mixing bowl. Whisk in the sugar, a little at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended, about 1 minute more. Pour the half and half and whisk to blend. Add the juice concentrate and vanilla and blend. Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker and freeze following the manufacturer's instructions. Makes about 1 qt

Since light cream can be up to 30% fat, I would use 2/3 cream and 1/3 milk. Actually, if I were making it myself, I would decrease the milk even more, since milk upsets me more than cream. I made strawberry ice cream Tuesday using a recipe that called for light cream, and I substituted all heavy cream. I took some to work because I can't eat all of it, and I thought DB didn't want it, but then after he had some yesterday, he decided it was very good. For myself, the most milk I would put it would be about 1/8 portion. I haven't noticed a problem with using all heavy cream, except that it did get very fluffy and I was afraid it would going to climb out of my ice cream machine, and so I ate little bits of it as it was going along. The worst thing that will happen is you will have excess volume, and you might want to make sure your ice cream maker will handle it. Everyone at work loved it. Lars