Kitchen

Donvier Manual Ice Cream Maker

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Delicious hand-cranked ice cream

I don’t generally buy used kitchen appliances, but when I spotted this little beauty sitting on a shelf at a thrift store I had to have it. I paid a total of $.33 cents for it, took it home and cleaned it up, then popped the inner chamber into the freezer. The next day, the kids and I made delicious, creamy ice cream in a matter of minutes. The Donvier ice cream maker has been around for decades and is still popular for good reason. According to the New York Times, Donvier was the first company to use frozen gel in a double-walled canister to chill the ice cream instead of ice and water, which previous ice cream makers used.

Somehow I didn’t know about it until I found it in the thrift store, but I love it because it’s simple, fun to use, and makes really good ice cream. I have a KitchenAid ice cream maker bowl, but I rarely use it because it takes up so much space in the freezer and I don’t like to listen to the KitchenAid running for the length of time it takes for ice cream to freeze. The Donvier is silent and requires no electricity, just a turn of the hand crank every now and then. The bowl holds only a quart, but it makes the perfect amount of ice cream for a family of four, and the kids love that they can make it themselves. Compared to the KitchenAid, the Donvier incorporates much less air into the ice cream, leaving it denser and creamier. I prefer this. Instead of ice cream making being a big production that needs to be planned, we can now make ice cream whenever we want, as long as we have the ingredients.

This summer I plan to pack it in the cooler so we can have ice cream when we’re camping. Here is a 10-second video of my son using the Donvier

-- Abbie Stillie 01/31/18

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