Elite Gourmet Automatic Homemade Electric Ice Cream Maker, EIM-520

I used to make homemade ice cream all the time and my family loved it. My machine got misplaced during a move and never replaced until now when I got this one. This is a great machine, so much easier to use than the one I had before. I don’t have to worry about salt or cranking a handle. It’s really pretty simple. Freeze the bowl, mix the ingredients, put in the bowl and start the mixer. In about 20 to 30 minutes you have dessert! It’s not frozen hard- for that it has to go back into the freezer again. This is more like soft serve. And it only makes a quart at a time. If you want more you will have to plan ahead and make more than one batch. But you’ll want to do that anyways!

Beautifully made icecream

I don’t normally take time to write reviews, but this was bad enough that I wanted to spare others the misery of buying a piece of trash. I didn’t use my choice words to describe this product for fear of censorship…

I bought this as a family Easter gift and right out of the box I was disappointed with the quality; a surprising amount of cheap and brittle plastic in the hand crank, the churning rod, and the motor. Additionally, the metal bands that encircle the outside of the bucket were much too large, meaning that they were for a bucket whose circumference was larger than this one resulting in the bands not being flush against the wood making them integrally useless; I guess they are for looks, but they look ugly as they make it look cheap. I had the faint suspicion that perhaps the wood might expand when wet and thus necessitate their being oversized, but this was not the case; just ugly and too big. Now to the functionality…

I’ll begin saying I used this once and was scrupulous in adhering to the exact manufacturer instructions and it broke in multiple ways. The product description craftily tells you that the motor will automatically shut off when the thickness of the ice cream creates the necessary resistance; what high quality!…not. There is no sort of clutch in the motor or any design qualities for this purpose, it’s just code speech for “when the ice cream gets too thick that the motor overheats, it burns out and can’t run anymore!” I’m not kidding, this is actually how it’s designed and if you detach the motor component after it burns out with it still plugged in, you’ll find that it will not operate after you’ve made a batch of ice cream until it cools off because what made it shut off was it being overheated; this is an unquestionable recipe for a destroyed motor if used repeatedly in this fashion, which means longevity is out of the question.

Let me continue in saying that when the motor did quit on me, the ice cream was NOT at the proper consistency (I’m saying this knowing that the manual says it should be soft serve consistency; it wasn’t…more like slushy soup), so I pulled out the hand crank thinking that I could manually finish it. As I cranked for several minutes, it was thickening up more, but the crank’s internal plastic components were making a racket (seriously, it was obnoxiously loud and annoying when cranking under resistance that I felt self-conscious that everyone inside eating lunch was annoyed while I was outside on the porch). As I went on, I suspected that the plastic churner was going to brake since it’s so flimsy, but to my surprise, it was actually the cast aluminum-alloy handle that snapped off while I was cranking it (I see now that another reviewer has a picture of the exact same thing).

Needless to say, at this point I wanted to hurl the thing in the trash can and be done with it, but my frustrations were mildly assuaged when I discovered that at least the handle snapped off right as the ice cream was a little less thick than soft serve consistency, so we were still able to eat it.

It actually makes me mad how cheap this product is, I wouldn’t “darken the doorstep” of this seller again if they can stomach selling junk like this to unsuspecting customers.

The ice cream maker is nice. However, after a couple of uses, I discover that there is clear liquid leaking from top edge of bowl constantly if the bowl is tilted even slightly.
It appears coating of bowl is chipped on tiny area along the edge. I only washed with water and non scratch sponge. I don’t know why this happened. I have to stop using the product.
I am very disappointed with this brand.

Simple machine, does its job. This is less than half the price of the Cuisinart I was looking at, figured I’d give it a try. Whatever is inside the freezing bowl, it stays super cold. Very simple to operate the motor, just a simple on/off switch. This is a 1qt machine, not a 1.5qt like many others, so I was concerned that my favorite recipe might not fit in the bowl. After a test run, what a relief it does! I also didn’t pour my ice cream mix in the little opening, I just pour it into the bowl and then put the lid on. Mixed for about 25-30 minutes until the consistency of a milkshake, then poured into a container and froze overnight. Very happy with the results!