Cuisinart Mix-It-In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker Review

About the Cuisinart Mix-It-In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker

The Cuisinart brand burst onto the scene in the early 1970s with its eponymous food processor, a product that changed how people slice, dice, and shred in their home kitchens. Today, the brand has extended into everything from cookware to countertop appliances like pizza ovens and, of course, ice cream makers.

But, what makes this ice cream maker stand apart from its competitive pack is that it's specifically designed to make soft-serve ice cream, with a pull-down lever mechanism that makes you feel like you brought the ice cream parlor home.

Appropriately named, Cuisinart's Mix-It-In comes with three built-in condiment containers for toppings like sprinkles and chocolate chips, and it is able to produce 1.5 quarts of ice cream at once. It also features a cone holder on the side of the machine you can use for cake or waffle cones. Lastly, it comes with a double-insulated freezer bowl.

How we tested the Cuisinart Mix-It-In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker

After removing it from the box, we inspected the machine and washed the pieces. We made space in the freezer for the ice cream bowl, which we froze for at least 24 hours between uses.

We had to read the provided directions and watch a few accompanying videos before started our first batch, as the process was less intuitive than expected (plus extra tricky for left-handed users).

When it was time to use it, we shook the bowl to ensure it was frozen solid and the liquid inside didn’t slosh around. For each test, we followed the provided recipes while chilling each base for the recommended amount of time.

We made five different recipes to test this machine, including vanilla soft serve, chocolate non-dairy frozen treat, mango sorbet, watermelon slushie, and cherry frozen yogurt—all according to the brand's included instructions.

Our expert

I, Rachel Narins, love making ice cream, sorbet, slushies, and sherbert all year round. I'm also a professional chef and a cookbook author. In fact, I own not one, but two ice cream makers and an extra 1.5-quart bowl for good measure. This means I can have multiple flavors without lag time.

What we like

Included recipes make tasty soft serve

Despite this machine's frustrations (more on those later), we really and truly love the ultra-classic, four-ingredient vanilla soft serve that it churned out. Each bite is nostalgic perfection.

If you don’t have any go-to ice cream shop nearby that offers soft serve, this makes a very close dupe you’re going to love—and you don't have to leave your house to enjoy it.

Frozen drinks are no problem

In addition to soft serve, we were able to make a decent frozen drink in a relatively short amount of time. The machine makes evenly frozen sorbet and slushies in less than 20 minutes. A good blender with some ice would do just as well, but if you have this and like it, the frozen drink options are reliable crowd-pleasers.

It looks nice on your countertop

This machine is a treat to look at. It’s white with aesthetically pleasing curves and a nostalgic design.

When the clear mix-in containers are filled with toppings, it has a festive, attractive appearance. Plus, the cone holder on the side is a fun way to add even more of that ice-cream-parlor look.

Offers freezing, churning, and dispensing from one machine

The machine freezes the chilled ingredients, churns, and dispenses in a pretty short amount of time. Depending on the time the recipe called for, most ice cream batches were done in under 30 minutes.

Then you can add mix-ins from the attached containers. There’s a small warming burner for hot toppings, and the built-in ring can hold several ice cream cones at once.

What we don’t like

To use it effectively, you need to plan at least a day ahead

To make any frozen recipe in the machine, it’s recommended to chill the ice cream bowl and the recipe base for hours (up to a day). This cuts into spontaneity (though it's a common issue for most ice cream makers under $200). We found that keeping the ice cream bowl in our freezer took up too much space, and as often as we would use this, it was inefficient.

We tried five recipes, multiple times, following the directions exactly. The learning curve wasn’t exactly steep, but you have to pay a lot of attention to each step, and do so without making mistakes. You also have to work quickly, before the bowl defrosts, adding a bit of anxiety to the experience.

Clean-up is a headache

This soft-serve machine has the potential to make a very sticky situation. Each of our initial tries was more frustrating than the last, with ingredients getting wasted and a lot of sugary mess having to be cleaned up as the machine overflowed and leaked. The directions warn that some liquid may spill out when first added, but we found it to happen every time. Also, when removing the ice cream bowl to clean it, the ingredients spill out and can overflow the catch tray.

This machine has so many tiny grooves, holes, a drawer for no reason, and curves, that it’s incredibly time-consuming to clean. None of the accompanying pieces are dishwasher-safe.

It's not ideal for kids or groups, which is a bummer

We’re adults and found that the time and attention needed to get results does not make it easy for younger people to operate.

In our opinion, it also doesn’t make enough treats for a small family or party. Since the cylinder takes about 12 hours to re-freeze (depending on how efficient your freezer is) you can only make about five single-cup servings every 8-12 hours. You can make ice cream and freeze leftovers—but then it won't be soft serve anymore.

The Mix-It-In doesn’t need the bells and whistles that it has

The machine comes with a small funnel to ensure the mix-ins you choose will fit through the cute chute. We like the way the mix-ins look in the machine, but the limitations of getting them out—can’t be messy, liquid, chocolate, or large—made us want to manually stir toppings into our soft serve with a spoon.

The funnel and the mix-in containers are additional items to clean. We also ended up with ingredients clogging the shoot or bouncing off the frozen food and flying everywhere.

The small burner where you keep sauces warm is in an awkward spot, so it gets other ingredients in the sauces. This is doubly true if you are left-handed, since most products are designed for right-handed users, and this appliance is no exception.

Should you buy the Cuisinart Mix-It-In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker?

Probably not, unless soft-serve ice cream is a deal-breaker

The Cuisinart Mix-It-In Soft Serve Ice Cream Maker (available at Amazon for $179.95) has some cute features, but it doesn’t work better than a much-less expensive electric ice cream machine or a high-powered blender. And, though it delivers tasty soft-serve ice cream from the comfort of home, the resulting mess makes us hesitant to use it regularly.

If you really want homemade soft serve at home, we recommend investing in the new Ninja Swirl by Creami Ice Cream Maker, for its easy-to-use system that users of the original Ninja Creami clamor over, and a consistency of the ice cream that is better and more firm.