Pacojet Competitor? The Ninja Creami

[mgaretz]

Guava sorbet made with a guava juice to which I added some coconut oil powder, stabilizer blend and glycerin.  Came out good and is more like a sherbet due to the added fat which also appeared to mute the sweetness.  Next time I will try it without.

 

 

 

[sverreef]

On 12/10/2021 at 8:23 PM, blue_dolphin said:

Goat cheese ice cream from Hello, My Name is Ice Cream with toasted walnuts and buckwheat honey, a topping that David Lebovitz recommends for the goat cheese ice cream in A Perfect Scoop. 

 

These flavours are actually somewhat similar to one of the desserts I got at Maaemo in Oslo a week ago. Soft serve roasted buckwheat ice cream (as a gluten free substitute for spelt), some type of goat cheese, goat milk caramel and some type of seasoning we didn't catch the ingredients of:

 

 

The buckwheat, goat cheese and goat milk caramel worked great together.

 

My first crude attempt to recreate the flavours from Maaemo were not quite balanced, as the buckwheat ice cream was a bit overwhelmed by the caramel sauce I made.

 

 

To balance it, I'll see if I can amp up the buckwheat flavour, but Maaemo's caramel sauce was also slightly thicker than the one I made, and not quite as dark. Possibly a goat milk cajeta casera/dulce de leche, so I might have to try that method next time despite the high cost of goat milk.

 

Aside from the slight balancing issue, the buckwheat ice cream was not bad at all, and it paired nicely with the chevre I used as the goat cheese element. As usual, the ice cream base is a slightly modified Chefstep creme fraiche recipe, and the roasted buckwheat was infused sous vide for an hour. The goat milk caramel sauce was absolutely fantastic together with the chevre by the way.

 

[sverreef]

It's been a while since my last post in the topic, but that doesn't mean I haven't experimented with the Creami😬

 

Based on the successful flavour pairing of goat milk caramel and goat cheese (chevre), I made a goat cheese and goat milk version of the CS creme fraiche ice cream:

 

 

Definitely something I'll make again. Next time, I'll use chevre though. This time I went with the a more savory (and slightly cheaper) Norwegian goat cheese, called Snøfrisk.

 

 

Next, I made an attempt to recreate the flavours of brown butter ice cream and molasses from Maaemo:

 

 

I used the same tweaked creme fraiche recipe which I used with olive oil as the flavoured liquid earlier, and Chefsteps' brown butter solids recipe to maximize the brown butter flavour of the brown butter:

 

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/brown-butter-solids

 

The ice cream was fantastic, but the hazelnut and molasses crumble needs a few adjustments in future iterations (a project for the upcoming fall/winter).

 

 

And finally, a Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) bud infusion:

 

 

It's equal parts mind boggling and amazing that a local ingredient such as this can create a beautiful bitter almond and marzipan flavour (just be sure to apply enough heat during infusion to neutralize the hydrogen cyanide). I just served it with crystalized dark chocolate this time, bur I've saved half the beaker to try to make a more complete dish later.

[jedovaty]

A friend of mine told me about some quick ice-cream recipe going around: cottage cheese, strawberries, and maple syrup.  Apparently you blend it then freeze it for 3 hours or so and you get "ice cream".  I did a quick blend with the bamix before freezing it.  Took 4 spins to get non-powder, it ended up silky smooth.  Taste was weird -- cottage cheese, strawberries, and maple syrup, maybe it was the smooth texture throwing me off.  I still ate the whole pint 🙃 

Sorry, didn't take pics, take my word for it, though, it was pink in color.

[SweetSymphonybyM]

Ok, enabler forum, I now own one too. 

 

Just stumbled across Ponthier's sherbet and ice cream proportions/recipes (including for Pacojet) and thought you may find them useful in this thread. 

Ponthier-Les-Fruits-de-la-Passion-Booklet.pdf

[ElsieD]

I tried making a strawberry frozen yogurt recipe yesterday.  I processed it in the Creami on Lite Ice Cream as my machine does not have a yogurt function.  It was very powdery so I did a re-spin.  It was still powdery but not as bad and when scooped, it actually formed a ball.  When we went to eat it, it was like trying to scoop cement, all I could do was use a knife to cut pieces out of the tub.  Any ideas?  The base consisted of 3.6% MF Greek yogurt, sugar, strawberries and a bit of lemon juice.  Should I have used a different setting?

[blue_dolphin]

28 minutes ago, ElsieD said:

I tried making a strawberry frozen yogurt recipe yesterday.  I processed it in the Creami on Lite Ice Cream as my machine does not have a yogurt function.  It was very powdery so I did a re-spin.  It was still powdery but not as bad and when scooped, it actually formed a ball.  When we went to eat it, it was like trying to scoop cement, all I could do was use a knife to cut pieces out of the tub.  Any ideas?  The base consisted of 3.6% MF Greek yogurt, sugar, strawberries and a bit of lemon juice.  Should I have used a different setting?

 

I think it's all about the temperature.  In my experience, the Lite Ice Cream is one of the longer cycles and warms the mix up a good bit, especially with a re-spin.  I've had it warm from -4° to 18° or 20°F.  Back in the fridge, it's going to go back down to -4° and be much firmer and less scoop-able than it was at 18 or 20°F.  Sounds like you're happy with the texture when it's warm but not when it's cool. 

 

You can add a tablespoon or so of vodka to your mix to get an end product that's softer and easier to scoop at your freezer temp.  Or run a re-spin before serving, or put the container in the fridge or on the counter to warm up a while before serving. 

[jedovaty]

9 hours ago, ElsieD said:

It was very powdery so I did a re-spin.  It was still powdery but not as bad and when scooped, it actually formed a ball. 

This sounds like similar results to my cottage cheese + strawberries experiment.  It took 4 spins.. I did two respins, and the respins didn't look like they did much so I'd say try running the regular cycle a couple more times instead of re-spin. 

 

Then also listen to what BD wrote

[sverreef]

On 8/9/2022 at 12:10 AM, sverreef said:

 

I haven't had much time to experiment with the Creami yet, but I've made a few versions of the sour rhubarb sorbet since I got the machine. I really need to work on my scooping technique, but both flavour and texture have been great 

 

 

I may have deviated from the original recipe by straining the mixture after the blending step instead of before, which frankly sounded weird to me, so I'm not 100% sure it's meant to be so creamy. I guess I'll have to do a comparison once the rhubarb is back in season next year...

 

I finally had the opportunity to test the MC Sour Rhubarb recipe as written, with the straining step done before blending. It clearly made a difference, resulting in a much lighter and less creamy sorbet. The texture was easier to scoop (less sticky) - training/experience and a better spoon helps too - but as far as mouth feel goes, the perfect balance might be somewhere in between the two extremes.

 

 

I have another batch in the freezer where I used a slightly coarser sieve (and a different type of rhubarb), so the experiments will continue...

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I noticed this afternoon that the NY Times Wirecutter site no longer is enamored with the Ninja.  Not that I have made any ice cream for months.

 

[FauxPas]

 

Looking through the latest Canadian Costco warehouse sales brochure and I see the Ninja Creami will be priced at $134.99 Cdn from June 26 to July 23. I don't see it on the website yet, but assume it will be there tomorrow. I will try to post the link, if I remember. 

 

At this price, I think I might be interested. Has it been featured at this price before? 

[weinoo]

On 6/20/2023 at 11:47 PM, JoNorvelleWalker said:

I noticed this afternoon that the NY Times Wirecutter site no longer is enamored with the Ninja.  Not that I have made any ice cream for months.

 

 

I like the wirecutter for certain types of reviews; for food and food related stuff, not so much.

[ElsieD]

11 hours ago, FauxPas said:

 

Looking through the latest Canadian Costco warehouse sales brochure and I see the Ninja Creami will be priced at $134.99 Cdn from June 26 to July 23. I don't see it on the website yet, but assume it will be there tomorrow. I will try to post the link, if I remember. 

 

At this price, I think I might be interested. Has it been featured at this price before? 

 

I am a Costco member and I've never seen it advertised before.

[FauxPas]

13 hours ago, FauxPas said:

Looking through the latest Canadian Costco warehouse sales brochure and I see the Ninja Creami will be priced at $134.99 Cdn from June 26 to July 23. I don't see it on the website yet, but assume it will be there tomorrow. I will try to post the link, if I remember. 

 

Can't find it on the website for some reason, maybe it's Warehouse only? 

[Kerry Beal]

38 minutes ago, FauxPas said:

 

Can't find it on the website for some reason, maybe it's Warehouse only? 

Maybe it's a roadshow? Nope - online - here.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Kerry Beal (log)

[FauxPas]

34 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Maybe it's a roadshow? Nope - online - here.

 

Odd that it shows as out of stock! I guess the extra $10 is for the delivery price. 

 

I'll look for it next Costco visit. Here is brochure listing:

 

 

 

 

 

[jedovaty]

I was gifted the Salt & Straw ice cream recipe book.  It offers three bases: cow milk, sorbet/corn syrup, and coconut milk.  Each requests xanthan gum, and coconut milk wants boxed coconut cream.

 

Most recipes are based on the cow milk, and the book doesn't discuss whether one could swap the bases.  Figured I might as well try.

For 4th of July weekend, I tried two recipes using the coconut milk base since I have family who is alelrgic to dairy: salted caramel bars & coconut cream, and garam masala cauliflower (supposed to be milk based).

 

The coconut milk base is fairly mild, and tasty on its own.  One is supposed to strain out the toasted coconut before using the base, which I did, however, next time I might try leaving it in to see if the Creami would pulverize.

 

The salted caramel bar recipe includes coconut cream caramel, a chocolate ganache, and caramel bars.  I skipped the bars because it required way more effort (I should've read the recipe and started on all this much earlier), and instead subbed in roasted cashews.  The ice cream base spun up almost liquid soft, I have no idea what happened, but it made hand-mixing in the ganache, caramel, and cashews easy.  This was ridiculously tasty.  The roasted cashews were perfect and kept it from becoming cloying.  Highly recommended.

 

For garam masala cauliflower, there were issues: first, their garam masala spice recipe looks more chai tea and heavy on the cinnamon (I do not like cinnamon).  I didn't have the requisite spices, so used the london-made garam masala I picked up in St. Martin last year with some Badia jamaican curry spice mix I bought in Aruba this year, then extra ceylon cinnamon from Ralph's.  Roasting per their instructions was ineffective, I had to up the temp to 400F and increase time an extra 10 minutes time to a little cauliflower browning and toasting of the spices.  The blended cauliflower with the coconut base tasted very good, but it was so mild that I added double the cauliflower mix into the coconut base before freezing.  Probably mistake #2.  It froze up solid and spun well to a silky texture.  The taste.. at first image like what a very ripe fart smells like, quite potent.  Then the cauliflower came through along with the garam masala and curry spices.  Although this was a strange experience and none of us seemed to like it, we kept digging in for more tastes, I think to try to figure it out because it was rather strange.  It begun to taste like Indian restaurant steam tray lunch bar food.. so yeah, not bad?  Despite the 1/2 pound turkey burgers we had an hour earlier, this ice cream kind of made us hungry.  Anyway, I heated it up this afternoon and poured over some left over rice and garbanzo beans for lunch with a few pickled jalapenos, it was good sauce.

 

I am intrigued with the garam masala recipe and will try it again using their spice combo and quantity, and TBD whether I'll use the milk or coconut base.  The coconut base did go well with it, once you get over the flatulent-like aromatics of cauliflower.  I'm also going to make more of the coconut base and try without straining to see how that works.

 

Sorry, no photos of the salted caramel looked a complete mess.  As you can see, the cauliflower one was an off-white beige color that looked like a poor paint job in a single-story bourgeoisie home in east Costa Mesa before going on the market at an over-priced sales number because of demand for the area.

Edited July 5, 2023 by jedovaty (log)

[Mars]

On 5/20/2023 at 7:13 AM, sverreef said:

It's been a while since my last post in the topic, but that doesn't mean I haven't experimented with the Creami😬

 

Based on the successful flavour pairing of goat milk caramel and goat cheese (chevre), I made a goat cheese and goat milk version of the CS creme fraiche ice cream:

 

 

Definitely something I'll make again. Next time, I'll use chevre though. This time I went with the a more savory (and slightly cheaper) Norwegian goat cheese, called Snøfrisk.

 

 

Next, I made an attempt to recreate the flavours of brown butter ice cream and molasses from Maaemo:

 

 

I used the same tweaked creme fraiche recipe which I used with olive oil as the flavoured liquid earlier, and Chefsteps' brown butter solids recipe to maximize the brown butter flavour of the brown butter:

 

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/brown-butter-solids

 

The ice cream was fantastic, but the hazelnut and molasses crumble needs a few adjustments in future iterations (a project for the upcoming fall/winter).

 

 

And finally, a Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) bud infusion:

 

 

It's equal parts mind boggling and amazing that a local ingredient such as this can create a beautiful bitter almond and marzipan flavour (just be sure to apply enough heat during infusion to neutralize the hydrogen cyanide). I just served it with crystalized dark chocolate this time, bur I've saved half the beaker to try to make a more complete dish later.

 

I haven't been on here for a few months and just got my Creami delivered today and I see this. My most recent batch of gelato was incidentally goat's milk so we might've been able to help each other had I been active haha.

Here's the Instagram post about it with all the explanation about how it came about if you're interested (https://www.instagram.com/p/CuZXt-ExePy/), otherwise hit me up if you want the exact recipe.

 

If I come across a goat farm nearby I might consider approaching a goat-cream because this is a hybrid of goat and cow. That might be a good thing to temper the animal flavour of the milk though?

 

Anyway, finally time to make my first Creami recipe! A friend dropped off a bag of mandarins the other week so guess a sorbet is in order. I'll go back through some posts here to refresh how to go about that (the recipe book provided is truly awful...)

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

Looks like the bigger one is available for a good price on Woot today - Ninja Cremi Deluxe

[jedovaty]

I tried the Salt & Straw coconut cream based recipe again, this time I did not strain the coconut out of it and just blitzed it right up after freezing it for several days.  Texture was slightly chewy, and the coconut wasn't fully blitzed smooth.  I enjoyed the taste and it works for my lazy ways.  It spins up very, very soft, easy to down a full pint friday night thanks to the week's work issues while watching random cartoons on netflix.  What?

[Shelby]

Day one thousand of over 100 F temps.  It's currently real feel of 107 F.  Yesterday was 114 F 😳.  All I want is fruit sorbets done in the Ninja.  A thought slammed into my head yesterday:

 

Frose (I can't figure out how to make an accent over the e lol)

 

I blended up a half a cup or so of strawberries with maybe a 1/4 of sugar and then mixed in most of the bottle of rose.  Froze over night.  I was worried it wouldn't freeze due to alcohol content but it did.  Ninja'd on the sorbet setting.

 

 

After freezing but before spinning on sorbet setting

 

 

 

You guys this is heavenly.  You could do a ton of different fruits etc.  I'm loving this grown-up slushy 😃

 

 

[randomwalk]

1 hour ago, Shelby said:

 

 

 

You guys this is heavenly.  You could do a ton of different fruits etc.  I'm loving this grown-up slushy 😃

 

 

 

Wow, that looks delish!  I am feeling inspired and hoping I can get my act together to try something similar.

 

[sverreef]

On 7/28/2023 at 2:10 PM, Mars said:

 

I haven't been on here for a few months and just got my Creami delivered today and I see this. My most recent batch of gelato was incidentally goat's milk so we might've been able to help each other had I been active haha.

Here's the Instagram post about it with all the explanation about how it came about if you're interested (https://www.instagram.com/p/CuZXt-ExePy/), otherwise hit me up if you want the exact recipe.

 

If I come across a goat farm nearby I might consider approaching a goat-cream because this is a hybrid of goat and cow. That might be a good thing to temper the animal flavour of the milk though?

 

I'm really looking forward to see what you'll make with your Creami, Mars. Once I'm done with the mushroom foraging season, I also have to have a proper look at your IG 🙂

 

Between fly fishing and vacation trips, I've not had much time to make ice creams. I finally gathered all the ingredients (minus freeze dried strawberry powder) and the time to make the complete Modernist Cuisine sour rhubarb sorbet dish. Both the salad and the gazpacho tasted great, but I feel that they didn't work 100 per cent together with the rhubarb sorbet.

 

 

Sorbet made with Fulton's strawberry surprise rhubarb. Good flavour, but the texture was a bit too sticky. I think maybe the length the rhubarb stems are cut before you sous vide them impact the amount of pectin you end up with after the straining step? At least I've had my best result when I cut the rhubarb in 2-3cm pieces.

 

I also made a strawberry version of the blueberry/creme fraiche recipe I posted back in March:

 

 

Good flavour, but the highlight of the dish is definitely the pairing of strawberry and roasted pumpkin seed praline (hidden under the fresh strawberries), which I've tried to recreate from a strawberry desert I got at restaurant Kontrast in Oslo two years ago.

 

Lastly, I found over 2 kilos of cep/penny bun/porchini mushrooms (Boletus edulis a couple of weeks ago, so naturally, I had to try to make a mushroom ice cream....

 

As usual, I used the CS creme fraiche recipe as the base, and modified it with cues from this grilled cep ice cream recipe from El Celler de Can Roca:

 

http://www.lomejordelagastronomia.com/en/dishes/grilled-cep-ice-cream-0

 

 

I made two batches. This one is without the deglazed pan juices and had a very clean, fruity and distinct cep flavour. I skipped the caramel, smoke and confit cep caps from the El Celler de Can Roca recipe, but together with an almond crumble (100g peeled and roasted almonds, 2g salt, 68g Scandinavian dark syrup) and pickled chanterelles, it was simply amazing 😀

 

The pickled chanterelles were made following Mikael Svensson's recipe, and aged for three years in the back of the fridge... I can't link directly to the translation, but if you copy the link to https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=websites, you should be able to get a decent translation of the recipe:

 

https://www.dn.no/smak/sylteskolen/smak/mikael-svensson/sopp/-sopp-blir-bedre-jo-lenger-den-star-pa-glass/2-1-679891

 

[blue_dolphin]

Made Raspberry-Shiso Sorbet from Nik Sharma's book, Season. The recipe calls for green shiso leaves, muddles and infuses them in the sugar syrup.  I used red shiso because that's what I had on hand and I subbed shiso vinegar for the lemon juice in the recipe.  Spun on the sorbet setting. 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I had a couple "pints" of Haagen-Dazs vanilla that had turned to soup.  I poured them into Creami containers and froze the containers in the blast freezer.  Processed wonderfully in the Creami.