Let’s say your love handles are getting heftier, you can’t keep away from the carbs, the doc has told you to lose 10 kg fast, but you can’t keep away from ice cream. Conundrum.
If you are the type of person who must end a high-carb meal with an even-higher carb triple scoop of butterscotch vanilla, salvation is at hand. You can now make frozen yoghurt, smoothies and sorbets, in the comfort of your kitchen.
Being endowed with a wide girth, Yantrick acquired a Cuisinart ICE-2 Frozen Yoghurt Maker and has since been indulging the sweet tooth without being riddled with guilt about the midriff. This is a cool machine in every sense of the word: simple, sturdy, easy-to-use, and you surprise yourself with the ease with which you can prepare creative desserts for your guests. And it’s all over in 20 minutes from start to finish.
The way it works is this: a bowl with a special chemical inside is frozen beforehand in the deep freeze of your fridge. Since this substance is at below zero when it freezes, the yoghurt also freezes when it comes in contact with the sides of the bowl and is stirred by an electric motor unit.
The 2 stands for 2 litres which is an adequate volume for a family of six and you can easily serve a party with 10 guests, provided your desserts are so popular that they keep coming back to the kitchen for thirds and fourths.
To start, stick your freezer bowl into the coldest part of the deep freeze so that it is completely frozen. In fact, leave it there at all times so you can make your dessert immediately, otherwise it may take up to 10 hours to freeze over. You then insert the freezer bowl into the maker’s base and immediately load the raw yoghurt. The fruit chunks and whatever else you want to embellish it with should be added only just before the end of the process. The yoghurt thickens and is magically frozen by the cold being transported from the freezer bowl.
The Yantrick, as you can tell, is bowled over by this yantra. There are a few downsides, the contraption seems to be needlessly noisy for something so small. Cuisinart should supply an optional silencer (joking). You also have to be careful not to leave the yoghurt churning on too long and sometimes there is a problem scraping the yoghurt out of the bowl with the spatula. And at 2,600 baht at a sale in Bangkok’s Siam Centre, it is a steal. Someone should import these machines to Kathmandu and give the ice cream wallahs a run for their money.
YANTRICK’s Verdict: A perfectly cool machine for the hot monsoon days that turns healthy yoghurt cheaply and quickly into a fabulous dessert. Even the kids won’t ask for ice cream any more.