BELLA 13716 Ice Cream Maker, 1-Liter, Red

love it, works great

this product was supposed to come with instructions and recipes, it did not. i had to look up instructuions on line and when i did it did not work. the mixing rod did not really fit, it looked like it was for another machine. very bad experience. after running for 45 minutes, ice cream was never mad.. terrible product.

I have to be honest, right??????? It WAS my experience that this machine is very basic.... it work(ed)s and that is all. Losing makes me cry and therefore two(2) stars! And now I KNOW, $30 is too much to pay for Bella.

works well

This is a neat machine. I got it as a gift and only used it like two times. I finally got a recipe that I knew would be successful so I pulled it out of storage to make some ice cream and before the 30 minutes were up, the paddle stopped rotating. I'd never seen that before, so I wondered if that happens when the ice cream freezes enough but it was still sorta liquid in the center. I pulled the paddle attachement out and removed it from the moter, but the gear was not turning even without a load. I decided, since it's long ago a gift and has no warranty, I would open up the motor and see if I could find the problem. Found the smallest gear, all of them are made of plastic, had broken clean in half! The little gear comes from the motor shaft and turns each bigger gear till it gets to the Paddle Gear. I tried to fix it with E6000, but it wasn't strong enough to keep the little gear from snapping in half again.Amazon Customer Service was really nice to look up the phone number of the Manufacterer, but when I called, it just hangs up. No voice mail, no automated voice directory, just hang up. They have no email.If I coudl just get a replacment gear then this thing will work like a dream. As is, it's just a big chilly ice bowl and a useless motor. Now that i know the gears are soft plastic, I don't want to spend $40 to replace it and have the same thing happen in a year again. I found a different phone number and left a message. Hopefully they get back to me soon next week.

I feel compelled to write a review for this little thing based on the number of poor reviews it has. I've owned it for several years (bought it on Black Friday from a department store, not Amazon) and have made loads of phenomenal ice cream in it. The key thing is to make sure the bowl gets cold enough--while the booklet that comes with it says it should chill for a minimum of 12 hours, it should really be a minimum of 36 hours (and when I'm in an ice-cream-making mood, I just keep it in the freezer 24/7). You should also make sure your freezer is cold enough--if it's only just below freezing (~30 degrees F), it won't be cold enough no matter how long you freeze the bowl. Last, it's worth noting that when the ice cream is finished, it will be the consistency of soft-serve, and should be immediately transferred to a freezer-safe bowl and put in the freezer--after a few hours it'll harden into "real" ice cream. These are all things, however, that will be true of any ice cream maker of this type.Bottom line: I've been tremendously pleased with this ice cream maker since I bought it. I started with the chocolate ice cream recipe that came with it (it's great, for the record) and quickly moved on to making up my own flavors, which is the best part of homemade ice cream. The only time my ice cream has ever failed to freeze properly was the time I was too impatient to let the bowl freeze as long as it needed to. Unfortunately the directions aren't totally accurate or informative enough regarding freezing the bowl, which I think may be responsible for the number of bad reviews.

I concur with many of the other reviewers, that it did not produce an ice cream consistency after 35 minutes in a bowl that had been chilled in freezer for 4 days. Only a watery milkshake.Also the amount it produced was very very small. Quite unhappy with the product.

First time using it, did not freeze product. Paddle did not seem to scrape the sides to get frozen mixture into center. Had to freeze the liquid to get final product. Would opt for better, more expensive unit to get better results.