Final Tips and Closing Thoughts

I'm Jonathan Knight, and I'm the generenal mananager of New York Times Games Our puzzles are human made every day with the standards you'd expect from the New York Times. And this matters because when you choose to spend time with our games, it should be time well spent solving puzzles handcrafted for you. We think that's something worth investing in and something worth paying for Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games at nyimes d. com slash join games I made a deal with my kids. I told them, If you make the ice cream yourself, you can eat it whenever the heike you want. And I have never watched them learn to build a skill faster in my life I'm Christine Seer Classette. I'm Kyra Blackwell, and you're listening to the Wirecutter Sh Hyra, it is officially summer. I feel like it's taken us a long time to get here. It was a brutal winter. Yes, but now we are here in summer. I don't know about you, but in my home right now, after dinner, everyone is clamoring for frozen treats. ice cream, ice pops, moochi ice cream has been a big favorite. It's like a separate line item on my budget. Joking, not joking. Totally. No, I do feel like I need to have something sweet after dinner Because I don't do dairy, I am constantly on the lookout for some new like frozen treat. and you'd be surprised how many recipes there are for, you know, things that aren't just your typical ice cream. I love it. I also like to have some frozen treats, and you turned me on to something mind blowing last year, which is to coat grapes and citric acid and a little sugar and freeze them. So I've been doing that lately as well Re delicious. I love that treat. It's kind of like a fruit riot, which I'm sure you've seen in grocery stores now, but it's so much cheaper. Yeah In honor of the hot weather and hopefully lots of summer fun ahead, this episode we are covering the best gear for making homemade frozen treats. and there are so many different gadgets and items that you can get to make frozen treats, but I think the The trick is like you might buy an ice cream maker and then it sits in cupboard for years or you know you buy some ice pot molds and maybe they don't work very well and they also sit in your cupboard. So this episode, the whole goal of it is to help direct people to what they will actually use. what's worth the money, because I think there's a lot of stuff out there that's just not great. Absolutely. So we're bringing back Wirecutter's senior kitchen editor Her name is Marilyn Oong talk about all the gear that Wirecutter recommends for making frozen treats. Plus, some of the devices that our kitchen experts have tried and give a hard pass to, kind of a hot topic. Ooh, this sounds divisive. And we are also going to hear a few special tips throughout the episode from some members of our kitchen team who know a lot about making frozen treats. after the break, we'll be back with Marilyn Oong You're a saver. So let PSENG turn your energy hustle into real savings. Up to thirty percent more on energy, according to energy dot gov. Visit pseg dot com slash whole home, answer a few questions, and we'll help you find an assessment that's right for you This is Maurice Shima, host of the Last twelve Weeks, a new podcast from Serial Productions, The Marshall Project, and the New York Times. A couple of years back, I got an email from a defense lawyer who wanted me to write about his client The client, David Wood, was on death row in Texas I'd been there for more than thirty years The lawyer was writing because David Wood had lost all of his appeals He was set to be executed The lawyer's plan to stop the execution was to try and prove something that nobody had successfully done in three decades that one of Texas's most notorious serial killers was actually innocent It wasn't that the lawyers didn't have a case to make. And no two people Fabricated testimony too get a guy executed. It's just that they had so little time to make it For the last twelve weeks, listen wherever you get your podcasts Welcome back Today we're speaking with Wirecutters Kitchen editor, Marilyn Aong about the best gear for making frozen treats at home. Marilyn, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It is so great to have you back Marilyn, your team has tested a lot of gear for making frozen treats. Yes. I mean, you've tested ice cream makers, you've tested ice pot molds. We're gonna talk a lot about that today I am curious though to start out. Why make your own homemade frozen treats? There are so many options at the grocery store, true. What is the argument for the DIY approach That's such a good point. And you know, we do have picks for those frozen treats at the grocery store too, ice cream sandwiches and all that. And you know, ingredients can be so pricey right now that I can't even make the argument for you're going to save money if you're making these sces at home. That's like an upfront caveat. If you want to try fun wacky flavors that are not easy to find, if you're a big fan of Durian and you want to try making Durian, you know, you can experiment with flavors more, but also if you have specific Dietary needs, people who are avoiding dairy or gluten, you can control exactly what goes in. You can tailor the sugar content. There's so much you can do to tailor it to what you want specifically, and that's really the best reason to get these things at home. Yeah, I really like that. As somebody who is trying to avoid dairy and watch my sugar intake, it is cool to just be able to really know what goes into the things that you're eating. Totally. So there's a really wide price range of gear for frozen treats. Our most expensive ice cream maker pick, for example hundred dollars That's extreme, but yeah that's a little wild, especially if you're not like, I don't know, making your own ice cream every day or every week even. So maybe that's really only for the advanced dessert makers. If somebody really wants something that's affordable just to make some tasty frozen treats at home, maybe it's just for the summertime even, what's the best place to start to start Yeah, you know, one of the easiest and cheapest ways to make frozen treats at home is popsicle molds. And we have tons of picks in the thirteen do to fifteen dollars range. Cute little shapes, you can make sharks, but also you can just make really classic Easy to eat. Popicles. And we actually have quite a few picks across our site that aren't super expensive. We'll get into ice cream machines later I think, but our top pick is sixty dollars. So there's ways to get started at home without spending a ton for sure. Okay, so now let's talk about ice pop molds even makes a good one. And why not just buy whatever modlds are available at your closest supermarket or like a discount home good store? Well, so the ones we recommend, they remove really easily. They're easy to fill. They're not gonna to break as easily. We've tested them over some of them over years and years and they hold up going in and out of the freezer all the time which can be hard on plastic A lot of them are easy to clean. you know, we test for all of that everyday use stuff that makes them really easy. Right. And they could be fun shapes. Yes. We've tested so many fun shapes. So which ones do we recommend So we have currently a Tvolo mold. That's like fifteen dollars. They're super easy to fill. You can pull them out one at a time, so you don't have to eat six popsicles at once. You pull it out, you run it underwater for like fifteen seconds and it slides right out Those are really great So I don't know if you remember otter pops. Did you have otter pops growing up? No I did not. Or like flavor ices flavor ices.. There we go. Okay. so that kind of like tube We have silicone picks where you fill it with, and this is the thing, right? You can just fill it with juice. It can be really, really easy if you wanted to You fill it up and freeze it. You can even lay them on their side It feels a little precarious, but It won't spill and it'll freeze into like a little tubey thing and you can squeeze it out and eat it. So we have a pick from Cfin that are those kinds of molds We have these really cute Zoku cat and dog pot molds or these shark ones. They have really great details And they're adorable. So lots of options. I love the Zoku pop molds. I had those when my kids were really little. The thing I liked about them is that they're small enough for toddlers, so you're not getting this huge ice pop. And they are such fun shapes. We were given one as a gift and I think they make great gifts like for a summer birthday party Totally. Do you have like a favorite recipe for a ice pop at this point So we tested with a really great recipe this year. So Samantha, Senvaratne has a coconut cream popskill recipe. It's excellent, but we wanted to simplify because we're making a bajillion of them for testing. So instead of using coconut milk and heavy cream, we just used coconut milk And then you use cream of coconut, which is like the Cco Lopez, like the coconut version of sweet milk, Gad. Yes exactly And then instead of coconut shreds, we put in chunks of mango. Oh yeah, because we also that's part of our testing is to see how these molds handle big chunks in the popsicles And it was delicious. Mango and coconut is such a great combo. It happens to be vegan because we just used coconut milk. Speaking my language? Yeah, I'm gonna be using that recipe like all summer long. My kids are gonna love that. I'm definitely making that one. What about a mold for somebody who's plastic conscious? Do you have a pick for that? Okay, so we're so excited because this year we finally found a metal mold that we love. O We've tested a lot of them over the years. know some of them leak, some of them are really, you can imagine trying to get like a cube out of a metal mold. You can't bend it, you know. But this one, the popsicles just slide right out. You do need to rinse it underwater for like a few seconds. so easy to use. Wow. Does that come with its own sticks? So you can get a set. they do sell like metal sticks with little silicone holders at the end. Wait, do popsicle molds not usually come with their own sticks? All of our picks do, okay. this metal pick It'll come with wooden popsicle sticks. and then you would have to replenish those wooden sticks later once you get through them all, but you can also buy the set with the metal sticks. And is this metal one like the classic shape? Yes. They sell other shapes too, but we tested. this is the brand is EcozZoy. That's the brand that we finally felt really satisfied with Do you use your blender for anything that you're freezing? Yeah, I mean, blenders are great. You know, there's the usual smoothies, slushies, milkshakes. you can definitely make like I see fun treats. I think we actually have a recommendation from Wirecutter senior staff writer, Leslie Stockton, a voice memo on a frozen treat that you only need a blender for. Let's listen to that One of my favorite summertime treats is a watermelon slushy over Boba. When wirecutter, you know in the early days, we had a tiny office in downtown Manhattan and there was a Boba T place right around the corner. And they made a watermelon slushy where they just blended watermelon cubes and ice and a blender until it was, you know slush like. and then they would pour it over Boba. and in the dead of summer, it was the most refreshing thing possible. Sometimes I would squeeze some lime over it. and if, you know, you're having a party, you can swap out the Boba for some tequila and have like a little fun time with it. Anyways, I love it. It's refreshing. It's not groundbreaking or anything, but it is more than the sum of its parts. All right bye What else do we recommend besides ice pot molds and ice cream makers? Okay, so one of my favorites of the last few years is Kitchen Aid makes this great shaved ice attachment which is awesome because your kitchen aid mixer is this like amazingly strong motor, right? So you can just attach this to it. It does take a lot of power to shave ice But you can put your kitchen aid to use free freeze pcks of you can do like plain water and shave ice and then add syrups and stuff to it. Oh, it's like bing su, like that Korean d. Yes. ye ing s or tropping or the different cultures of shaved ice, you can also Freeze like a puuck of milk And then when it shaves it, it's actually kind of like sheets of snow. So if you've ever been at a Lingxu place or something and they've called it shaved snow And then you add your condensed milk or mango, strawberry, delicious. s. This is really fun to experiment with and so easy to tailor ingredients, to keep things dairy free, to keep things lighter and more refreshing. So what if you don't have a kitchen aid? Have you tried someuff? That is true We did, actually. I wanted to check out Hawaiian shaped ice makes a machine, it's a hundred dollars. It's called Hawaiiani Dice Home Pro And I was curious that seemed like one of the more competitive ones on the market But it did not work great. I know, not as good as the kitchen aid hang attachment. I have to ask about a different device, the Ninja crereamy. I am served this constantly on Instagram. I have a lot of, you know, gym people, weasters and stuff. and I think it's very popular with people who are trying to make quote unquote healthy treats. We've tried it. I don't think we recommend it Tell me more. We did try it And yeah, we don't recommend it. And here's why. Okay, so back up for a second. The creamy works kind of the opposite of ice cream makers. So usually right, you make a liquid base. and you chill it and then you pour it into your ice cream maker and the ice cream maker spins and freezes it into ice cream. The the Nid crerei works the opposite way. So you make your liquid base, but then you freeze it first into like a block of frozen base. And then you pop that into the machine and the machine basically drills down into that base repeatedly, usually it has to do it several times kind of fluffy soft ice cream texture out of this hard block of frozen base The ice cream that it makes is actually pretty good But we're getting a lot of burning smells from the motor. probablyrobably. We're also tasting a little bit of burnt plastic. And then if you go online and you read reviews, There's a lot of people seeing plastic shavings in their ice cream. Yeah, just the drill mechanism, I mean, it's going hard, right? It's drilling into this frozen pck of material And if it gets too close to the plastic container, is there any way to avoid that? Like Christine was I have been o, I have' very anious about this. It's like the last things are where I wantan to get it, but I know you don' recommend it. so I'm like, I My brother has one. He loves it. I did see recently you can buy metal canisters that fit into the. Okay, Have you tried them? We have not, but that would be a good thing to try Why do you think this machine is so popular with people who are trying to eat healthier and make healthier treats? So my guess is Freezing something first and then drilling down into it gives you more leeway with the texture of what you're making. So in an ice cream maker, you kind of need a certain blend of fat and sugar and liquid for the crystals to form the way you want them to and for the texture to set up in that prereamy Gey ice creamy way. So what the ninja creamy does is like if you're adding, you know, I'm not in that worlds like protein. But I'm guess Exactly. I'm like whey powders. The ninja is just pulverizing it all. And so it's gonna give you a little more leeway with getting a texture that tastes yummy and like goes down easy Wout all the usual constraints that an ice cream maker requires in order to spin the ice cream into something yummy. Let's cover all the ninja things because we're talking about Ninja. So Ninja creamy, no, you don't recommend. What about the Ninja slushy maker? I think we tested this, right? Yeah, One of our writers, Mackie, tested the Ninja slushy. And we tested it in the test kitchen too. We tried a few different things in it And we love that thing. You know, like we didn't ninja' so tough We don't always want to love their stuff. They're like all about making appliances that don't fit in the categories. But the slushy was great. We did, I think, like a Dr. Pepper slushy in it or some kind of soda slushy in it It can be a little touchier. So margaritas, right? Like frozen margaritas, that's like one thing people love to use these flushing machines for You have to real, I know. You have to really get the alcohol and the sugar right So just you have to do some tinkering with the alcohol recipes for sure. It was pretty easy to use. It was pretty easy to clean. The cleaning part feels intimidating, right? You're staring at this giant machine that has sllush all over the insides of it, but you can pull things out and rinse them and a lot of the stuff is dishwasher safe. All of the ninja products seem very big to me. I feel like my kitchen can't accommodate these sized toottally I don't have enough counter space. Yes. I'm picturing like the person with the basement theater and like a kitchenette in their basement and they're having people over like you get a slushy, you get a slushy. It's likes part of their bar cart. It's part of their personality And like how fun is that, right? Absolutely. But yes, the machine is huge. But yes, I was curious too, if there's ways to make slushies with not taking up two square feet of counter space And I don't know if you' all have seen on TikTok, there's like these little squeezy, slushy cups. I have into my feed, but it probably will. Okay. Exactly, right. now now your phone knows. I'm gonna pull it out. Yay So there's a couple types. The one on TikTok that's gotten really famous is this squeezy one. Ooh. So it's like a it's almost like a slushy like an ice pack. seven and eleven slushy shaped cup actually like frozen. Yeah. So it's squeezy silicone on the outside. The whole cup squeezes Do you hear that? Yeah, That's like an ASMR slushy cup. I like it. It's So you put st pull it you have to freeze it overnight and you pull it out of your freezer and you pour stuff into it and then you slush it around But you should Yes, you squeeze it.. Yeah. Do you want to try it? Yeah. I have lemonade here and Dr. Pepper, what would you like Dr. Pepper Yeah So its So it's pretty fast Okay. The squeezy one will do it in a couple of minutes. Okay. It's called frozen magic. It's a squeezy one. And then the other two that you have here are Zoku and they're like hard on the outside. It's hard plastic. So these oku ones S I start squeezing them? Yeah. Kyra, would you like to try one of the Zoku ones So these are hard plastic, they're not gonna squeeze, but it's the same thing. you freeze it overnight and you pour liquid into it for you your prepper Dctor Ppper all around. These do take a minute, especially the Zoku ones because you're not squeezing the like frozen material into it. You're waiting for it to kind of crystallize on the side. Oh, I see ice forming. Is it forming? Yeah. So for these oku ones, you're just gonna to start seeing like ice forming on the sides of the cup and you're just meant to scrape it down. So do you do we recommend these on the site right now Not yet, peoplee are getting an inside track into. Yeah. something This is up Behind the scenes early. M is definitely turning into ice. This is so fascinating. My kids would love this. Oh yeah. How much are these guys? Okay, so the frozen magic squeeze guy is eleven dollars These Zoku ones are twenty three dollars. Mine is slushy Yeah, it's Dctor Pepper Okay, so to recap, if you want to get into some fun frozen treats for the summer, but you don't want to just dive head first into buying an ice cream maker, you can get really great ice pot molds and those can range anywhere between ten to fifteen to twenty dollars, which is great and they're durable and they last You could also use your blender if you want to make a slushy or a smoothie, or if you want like a shaved ice deal, then you can get the attachment for the kitchen aid too. After the break, we are going dive deep into ice cream makers. Marilyn, we are going to find out why we like the sixty dollars one and when it might be worth upgrading to something more expensive. We'll be right back If you're a saver, you know it. 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If you already subscribe, thanks If you'd like to, go to mIimes d. com slash subscribe We're back We're going to talk about ice cream makers now, but before we do, we're getting a tip from our staff writer, Kira Murray Johnson, who loves making ice cream at home Reading Hello, My name is Ice creream by Dana Cree has changed the ice cream making game for me One of the biggest tips that I took away from her book is to use glucose syrup instead of granulated sugar Sugar lowers the freezing point of water, so ice cream needs a good bit of sugar to keep it from freezing into one hard icy block. The chemical structure of glucose makes it more efficient at this job than granulated sugar Plus it's less sweet so you can better control the sweetness of your ice cream while maintaining that nice scoopable texture Marilyn We cannot talk about frozen treats without getting into ice cream makers of ours. I personally have had a couple of ice cream makers. Right now I have the kitchen aid attachment for my kitchen aid, and I like it, but it has been sitting in my cupboard for three or four years. I think I've used it three times I'm wondering who do you think an ice cream maker is for? Like in this hierarchy of all these things that we've talked about, likeike who should be getting an ice cream maker? Right A couple of things I will say. One, I was going to ask you which one you have, so it's good to know the kitchen aid attachment. I used to have that one too. and also it sat lot. We have the Cuisinart Ice twenty one now, which is our top pick in the ice cream maker guide and we use it all the time. It's just so nice to have like one compact machine that does it. You set it up and it will just do the thing And I also will say took a lot of the pressure off of the kind of ice cream that we make Totally anybody who's excited to make ice cream at home, it doesn't have to be a super complicated thing. I made a deal with my kids. I told them, if you make the ice cream yourself, you can eat it whenever the heike you want. And I have never watched them learn to build a skill faster in my life. But you know, that means we stick to simpler recipes. We're not doing custards. so we're not usually separating yolks and whites We're usually using slightly simpler recipes with heavy cream or cream cheese or we're doing frozen yogurts But you really can do so much, even if you're keeping it simple. I love like a French style custardy ice cream, but I am not mad at the stuff that my kids have been making Well so is that the reason to get it? Like it's just fun to make your own ice cream? Like you said earlier, like you can tweak the ingredients, you can make it healthier, but I can buy some really great ice cream at the store and I feel like to go buy nice milk and good vanilla and like all the ingredients it ends up being kind of expensive Here I am being like the Debbie Downer on ice cream. I'm just curious, I kind of felt like, why would I make vanilla ice cream in my ice cream maker when I can make great vanilla ice cream at the store, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think it's just one of those tools where if you're the type of person who enjoys experimenting, it is going to be a really fun way to treat yourself over the summer. So for our family, we go berry picking, right? come tons of blueberries We made blueberry frozen yogurt. We had tons of raspberries. Raspberry ice cream is one of my kids favorite flavors, so they make that every summer. We get a pineapple. Do people know this at Wirecutter? We get an anniversary pineapple every year. I think it's the first time it's come up. actually shipped stight from Hawaii. Yeah. they are shippedaa Y. They're delicious. like to make ice cream with that. And I will use the pips and the stems to make a pineapple syrup, which then I will sometimes put on the shaped ice We really enjoy having this kind of arsenal of different things to like Ingredients flow through our homes, right? And I'm just the kind of person who really enjoys playing with let's throw this into a bed of ice cream and see what happens. Or someone brought over too much eggnog the other day. Let's turn that into ice cream Oh, I like that. So it can be a way to kind of use up things that you maybe don't have a use for otherwise. Yeah, just to have fun with the things that are flowing through your house Okay, so you talked a little bit earlier about the difference between how an ice cream maker makes ice cream versus the creamy that we talked about earlier. Maybe you can just get into it a little bit more. L how is it actually working? Because there's a couple different types of ice cream makers that I recommend. L the main one, the Cuisin are is you put it into the freezer, and then there's a different type that uses what is called a compressor. Yes. So explain the difference between those two The So the basic thing putting your liquid ice cream base into your ice cream maker, and usually it's like a bowl and that bowl will have a really cold freezing temperature surface. And usually there will be something in there that is scraping the side of the bowl. We call it a dasher So your cream's in there, it's chilling. and then it's like sticking to the bl and then that dasher is scraping the frozen ice cream off the sides of the bowl and back into the mixture. And as it does that, over time you get this swirly, whippy, beautiful ice cream So our top pick, the Cuisart IS twenty one They use insulated bowls that you have to stick in your freezer, double walled metal bowl and inside is a liquid that when it freezes, it gets really cold and then Pull it out of the freezer just as you're ready to turn your ice cream and it will freeze your concoction nice and quick Other machines that we recommend, most of them are the brand winter Just like you said, they have a compressor, which is kind of like the core of your refrigerator or your air conditioner, right? It's like circulating coolant to create like this coldness. And so those machines, you plug them in, you don't have to freeze them overnight, and they have a mechanism inside that will chill the bowl ofen are kind of like medium range compressor picks from winter, they're like two to three hundred dollars, and they actually take a little bit longer than the Cuisonart Ice twenty one to turn your ice cream becausecause it takes time for the compressor to start working our fancy eight hundred dollars one. That one works so fast that It's just as fast as the Cuisont ce twenty one. And they have different pros and cons. You know, I just mentioned our top pick, the Cuisonartt ce twenty one is actually quite fast because you're pulling it out of the freezer and it's just frozen from the get go you know, it can be a pain to store a freezer b I think that's why I never make the ice cream becausecause I don't have room in my freezer. and then I always forget, oh, you know, and then it's like, I don't wan to wait for it to freeze. Yeah. I will say in the summertime We store our freezer bowl in the freezer at all times. Yeah. And we pull it out and we use it and we wash it and then we just stick it back in the freezer. So if the top pick, which is sixty dollars that's the Cuis in art faster than the upgrade pick, which is eight hundred dollars. Why are you paying hand? So it's not faster than the eight hundred dollars pick It's a little bit faster than the two to three hundred dollars range machines that we recommend Again, some of it just comes down to what people are looking for. One of the first things that I'm going to ask anyone who's getting ready to buy an ice cream maker is, what texture of ice cream do you love? Do you like dense, chewy ice cream or do you like the really fluffy, airy, stretchy style of ice cream? because the different machines that we recommend kind of produce slightly different textures. Give us the backakd down. So the Cuiz in our Ice twenty one produces slightly denser richer chewier ice cream We have two winter machines that we recommend So the winter ICM two hundred one SB, lovely name. That one makes more light textured ice cream. It's more fluffy, more airy. What they call overrun is the air that gets added to ice cream when it's being churned. A higher overrun ice cream will have more air whipped into it in the churning process and that will be kind of a fluffier Marshmallow year ice cream texture, and then the winter ICM fifteen LS makes slightly denser ice cream, and that's more similar to the Cuisinart. So with our two compressor picks, you can kind of choose ice cream texture you're kind of gearing towards But the benefit of the two to three hundred dollars machines is Because you don't have to freeze the bowl, you could make batch after batch after batch after batch. on the Cuisinart bowl style maker, you'd have to freeze the bowl again after making a batch So you'd have to wait the next day to make your next batch of ice cream. a really dumb question. Go for it. No questions or nob question. really dumb. but I'm like, every ice cream that I buy in the store is in a very specific container. What are you keeping the ice cream in? That's a great question. That's a great question. I am all ears. What you keep the ice cream in? I honestly have ended up using a lot of court contain like takeake out court containers. It's just soy. Yeah. I sometimes when I have made ice cream, I'll put it into like a glass storage containers that we recommend on the site. Yeah. I've totally done that too. Okay, so we covered these two to three hundred dollars compressor units, These ones from Winter. Yes. tellell us Who should be thinking about this eight hundred dollars machine that we recommend. Yeah. So do you all know this machine was in the Gilmore Girls? No. Have you Oh my God. It's the gift that she gets after here. her wedding. It totally is It is it called it's called It's the Lello the Lello Musso Lucino It's an Italian machine and it is designed to produce more of a gelato texture. Which do you guys like gelato? I love gelato. It's my favorite type of ice cream. Okay. So you have to get the eight hundred dollars machine. Y. And this machine, I mean, just hands down every year that we've tested since twenty fifteen produce just the most gorgeous ice cream texture. It is a compressor machine and this compressor works really fast. Also, you can just do batch after batch after batch The biggest flaw of the Lo is that the bowl is not removable So when you're done making your ice cream You're letting it melt, you're scooping out all the excess and then you're wiping it down. But I know. That's wild. I know. But it is all stainless steel. It's really high quality material. and so it really it sounds kind of intense, but it really is very it wipes away really cleanly really quickly So who' this for? Is it for like the person who is just obsessive about making the best ice cream and they, you know, maybe want to cut down their eight dollar scoop habit down the street at the Gelato store. Yeah. I mean, Gelato is pricey. pricier than a lot of the other ice cream you can get out there If you know you're going to use this thing If you have a lot of counter space, this thing is huge and it's very heavy. And so if you are going to be using it often, likely you're going to want to be able to park it somewhere. It's also gorgeous Like it just looks like a little time machine, mid century appliance. It's gorgeous If you have eight hundred dollars hundred to drop on something completely frivolous, you probably love counter space. Yeah. O you know, a lot of people use it because they're starting small businesses. They're serving ice cream somewhere It's a great excuse to get a really nice machine. You't have to leave that lorea I gave it back. Spoiler alert. I know, right We've got one more fun tip from senior staff writer Kathleen Squires. She is also the co author of a book about ice cream sandwiches from the beloved brand Cool House, so she knows what she's talking about Here are some tips from Coolhouse on making the best ice cream sandwiches at home. F firstirst Be generous with flavoring as freezing will mute the flavor. Second, If you're making a boozie ice cream, add alcohol at the very end of the process. If you add too early on, the ice cream won't freeze. Third Always add your mix ins last for even distribution and so that they won't sink to the bottom. Finally, after you make the ice cream and cookies, build your sandwiches and freeze as a whole instead of making them on the fly so that they won't fall apart and they'll be easier to eat. Happy eating