horseflesh

I've been using Ruben Porto's "Tres Leche" recipe a lot, adding modifications. It seems like a really good base recipe for the Creami. I scaled the recipe to use one full can of sweetened condensed milk, yielding 40 oz of ice cream base, which I split into two 20 oz Creami Deluxe beakers. It's shy of a 24 oz Deluxe beaker, but it also gives room for add-ins. (My full base recipe is one full 397 g can of sweetened condensed milk plus 507 g Costco whole milk, plus 366 g Costco heavy cream.) 3.8% w/w cocoa powder turns it into a nice chocolate ice cream. (24.1 g in 20 fl oz base) PB2 peanut butter powder makes a good peanut butter ice cream. I have used both 6 tablespoons PB2, and 4 tablespoons plus 1 mL of McCormick Vanilla Butter Nut flavor (sold for baking). The more PB2 powder you add, the more the consistency changes... Even 6 tablespoons is still OK, more than that may be pushing it. I also tried adding about 100 g cherries to the base. This made a clear cherry flavor, but it was not strong enough to carry it on its own, and adding more cherries increased the batch size too much, and would have compromised creaminess as we're getting far away from the correct sugar/fat ratio. I meant to back it up with cherry flavor extract, but I accidentally picked up the Blackberry instead of Black Cherry bottle. This was a happy accident because the cherry/blackberry result was extremely tasty. 0.590 mL pistachio extract in 20 fl oz base made a fantastic pistachio ice cream. I mixed in some chopped pistachio nuts. Loved it. The flavors I am using come from Apex Flavors, they are wonderful. They are broken up by category, some are sold for beverages, some for baking, some for ice cream, but I have had good luck breaking the rules. My last batch also used a stabilizer for the first time. Chris Young commented on ice cream stabilizers in an old ChefSteps thread... I'm going to copy it all here because it's good info that should not be lost. What I did was mix up the suggested 1:1:1 locust bean gum, iota carageenan, and xanthan gum. I applied it to the Tres Leche base at 0.15% w/w. Because LBG needs heat, and iota carageenan needs heat and ideally the absence of sugar, I hydrated this mix in just the milk portion of the ice cream base recipe. I picked 170F for 20 minutes--easy thanks to my Control Freak. Then, I blended the base together. The LIX stabilizer seemed to improve the mouth feel of the final ice cream a bit, and it also noticeably helped to slow melting. I would say my first batch of Tres Leche ice cream (berry flavor), plus 0.15% LIX stabilizer, was the first batch of ice cream I have made that I feel was around commercial quality.

I'd give it a try. If the ingredients are just mangoes, then by weight it should be the same as my frozen chunks that I pureed myself. If there is any added water you might want to try reducing the water added in this recipe, hard to say by how much though.

I cannot edit my previous post with the mango sorbet recipe scaled to the Deluxe, but I just spun it on Sorbet mode and it came out well.

The sorbet cheat sheet that has been shared is great info, but it is too bad that it isn't all done by weight because I am starting with frozen fruits. I converted the mango recipe, and scaled it for a 24 oz Creami Deluxe beaker. Cook's Illustrated Mango Sorbet for Creami Deluxe Mango chunks 608 g Water 67 g Sugar 93 g Lemon juice 18 g Vodka 8 g If you are also using frozen mango, you will need to let the chunks soften overnight in the fridge before you can blend everything. The mix is too thick to process frozen, at least it was for my Vita-Mix. BTW, to do this conversion, I cheated... I used an AI chatbot instead of personally searching for the average yield in grams of a peeled and pitted "medium" mango, and doing the other conversions. I also asked it to create a recipe that accounted for the actual volume of the blended product, which requires some math for the sugar/water mixture. It produced a converted and scaled recipe that perfectly filled a 24 oz Creami Deluxe beaker. I do have a brain, I could have done all of this myself, but I have to admit it was fun to get the answer immediately and get back to the kitchen. If the output sucks once I spin it, I will amend this post and confess.

ChefSteps has released new ice cream content including some recipes which accommodate the Creami. Subscription required to view, I assume. https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/ice-cream-parametric

That's a great reference! If someone has not done it already I will have to figure out weights needed to yield Creami canisters.

That recipe looks great, thanks for pointing it out! Is that mango pulp sweetened? While I do prefer full fat ice cream too, if Porto is correct and 16% is the limit... I can still live with it. I just filled my three jars and popped them in the freezer... Everything was blended. One "Dole pineapple whip" recipe, found on a Creami fan site. (Canned pineapple, coconut cream, monkfruit sweetener) One improvised peach yogurt (Full ~20 oz peach yogurt container, volume to 24 oz with jarred peach slices and syrup, extra squirt of agave) One improvised mandarin-cherry-ginger-lime concoction (canned mandarin slices in syrup, a couple oz leftover Amarena cherries, some shredded ginger, big squeeze lime, no extra sweetener) (I know we aren't supposed to improvise ice creams and sorbets, but I will apparently need to learn the hard way.)

Just got the Deluxe from Costco. I have only made one thing so far, Ruben Porto's Tres Leche. Couldn't have been easier to make, and it came out great. It reminded me a lot of the "sweet cream" flavor at the chain Coldstone. I'm still trying to get a handle on using this thing... Porto says that you should not do recipes with more than 16% fat content, but it seems like people are using any old ice cream recipe and it is working out, perhaps with a respin. Porto also said that all of the official Ninja recipes are miserable so I've ignored those and the entire Ninja recipe web site... I don't know that I trust the general public to rate good ice cream recipes since it is so technical. But am I throwing the baby out with the bath water? As much as I love complex cooking, sometimes I also just want a simple and tasty victory. It's weird to say on this forum especially but a spreadsheet is not always the ideal appetizer. My hunt for EZ recipes continues.

What a great review! And recipes too! I'm especially glad you discussed the plastic gear issue. If I was buying today I think I'd choose the lesser known Nemox even though it's more expensive, because I've always worried about "playing chicken" with the Musso. It's hard to find good ice cream info, thanks @paulraphael!

I had some Costco credit and a need for affordable new pans so I decided to try the Henckels knock-off of Hexclad pans: Hxagon. https://www.costco.com/henckels-hxagon-3-piece-skillet-set.product.4000209381.html A cheap knock-off of an overrated pan, how good could it be? Well, so far I think they are ... Not bad. When searing in the biggest pan, and then making a pan sauce, it was easy to see the heat was pretty even. I was actually very pleased with how my seared pork tenderloins came out. And when I made some caramelized onions in the medium pan, it was ... Fine. No complaints. They are not really non-stick, but low-stick. An egg cooked without oil or butter will not slide around, but can be loosened without destroying it. (I knew this going in but those who are hoping for full Teflon slipperiness will be disappointed.) The pans are easy to clean... In slipperiness and ease of cleaning they seem similar to Circulon hard-surface non-stick pans. These pans also have a perfectly flat and non-textured bottom which makes them good for the Control Freak. The smallest pan isn't quite heavy enough to push down on the CF temp sensor, though. Even with a single egg in it, the small pan sits at an angle, resting on the springy sensor without fully depressing it. It needs just a little more weight to sit flush, so depending on what I am doing with the tiny pan I may need to keep a wooden spoon resting on the edge to maintain good temperature control. For the money these seem to be reasonable pans. If anything interesting happens down the road I will post a follow up.

ChefSteps flogged the heck out of the new CF before it went on sale and their staff was participating in forum chats about it. I doubt ChefSteps would help with a warranty claim but IMHO there is a good chance that they can answer questions. ChefSteps has countless videos featuring the CF as the cooktop too, and they may be able to help with questions about cookware. It's a contact form. Try it out. If you are not satisfied I apologize in advance for wasting your time with the link.

ChefSteps support is good, maybe they can help. https://support.chefsteps.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

The poster frame on that video shows a pan that I have, haha. It's the cheapest possible frying pan from a restaurant supply store. And indeed, it barely works on induction.

For a simple cheese sandwich, cold ingredients grilled at 350F for 3 to 4 minutes per side works fine. But that's with regular bread. (I usually put butter in the pan and plop the sandwich into liquid butter instead of trying to spread butter on the bread.) I am not picking on your bread, but it just may not perform the same.

Now this is interesting, what kind of cooking do you do below 175F?

It's possible that almond bread just isn't great for this application. Even with wheat bread I find that the bread can brown before the insides fully melt, especially with thick bread or if I am putting meats and things in there. I usually put the ingredients that will go inside the sandwich into the microwave for a moment, to get them up at least to room temperature. Then, I finish assembly and put it in the pan.

I'll see if I can figure out a way to get the phone + thermal camera secured so taking pics is easy.

I have a D'arto carbon steel pan and a thermal camera. What temperature should I set?

I have found even a small concavity to be really bad for my CF's accuracy. I had to return a pan for that reason. Emissivity setting is pretty vital unless you are measuring a perfect surface like blackened cast iron, so if you don't trust your thermometers... I find the CF temperature control to be very good but it isn't magic. It's still induction so uniformity is not perfect either. Nor is the sensor. In one thin pot I have, water boils at 212F on the dot. In a different thicker pan, the same kind of boil requires a set point of 218F. I am all about numbers too but I would put away the thermometers for now and try cooking some things and see how it goes... See if you get the results you expect, see how the temperatures look when the pan is more fully loaded.

Like @Dex said, 240V is technically available but little used here. In fact a 240V outlet is often referred to as a "dryer outlet" since that's one of the few routine uses. That Aussie 240V CF is awesome.

Since I have the original I decided to wait. There will be another sale. I am interested in getting another CF for sure, using a legacy burner is no fun any more, haha. I am sure we are all looking forward to detailed reviews from new users.

I love the dedicated time knob on the CF. I hope the timer isn't buried on the home version. There might be enough room on the touchscreen for a dedicated timer. 🤞

The Control Freak may not be perfect but its ability to hold a specific temperature is much better than on other induction burners I have tried, where that feature basically didn't work at all. I have also found temperature-based cooking to be very liberating. If I can get another cooker with the same quality temperature control for a lot less money, I am open to ideas.

That is what mine came with. I contacted support to see if there was an update because I also couldn't find more info on the web site. They assured me it was the latest. (They also said it was the last.) I've been cleaning mine with the same kitchen rag and spray cleaner I use on countertops. The display has been OK so far and I haven't been especially careful about it. But if I wanted to guarantee there were no scratches ever I'd use a microfiber cloth or an old t-shirt. You will love your Control Freak!

After a couple of weeks with the Control Freak, wow, am I happy I got this thing. I am starting to understand why some people on the thread just stopped using their gas cooktop and put Control Freaks up there instead. More than once I found myself saying, "I wish I bought two." Maybe next year if the same deal comes along again!