- Capacity.
Just how much ice cream do you want to make? How much ice cream can you eat?
How many family members do you have? Will you be making ice cream just for the fun of it on weekends or will you be making large quantities for a big family get together?
Check if the ice cream freezer you’re thinking of buying will make ice cream that’s suitable for freezing and how long the ice cream will keep in the freezer.
- Hand cranked or electric powered.
Either way is good, both methods will make real good ice cream but obviously hand cranking is harder than throwing a switch. You might have fond memories of a hand cranked freezer from your childhood, but before you get too nostalgic cast your mind back and remember just who was doing the cranking? Was it you or your Dad? This ties in with #1. Capacities, if you’re going to need a 6 quart ice cream freezer remember that’s a lot of mixture to be worked by hand.
- Cleaning
Just how easy is your new ice cream maker to clean? Remember you and your family are going to be eating this ice cream so you need to make sure the freezer is spotlessly clean. Will you have to strip it down to clean every part? Are the parts that need cleaning dishwasher safe? Remember who’s most likely to be doing the cleaning, the kids might enjoy adding chocolate chips or fruit, they might even be keen to do the hand cranking, but when it comes to cleaning up they’ll be long gone.
- Build quality
Check out the quality of the ice cream makers you’re considering buying, are they plastic, metal? Do they look as if they’re built to last for years or one summer? If you’re looking for a hand cranked freezer how sturdy is the crank mechanism? If it’s an electric freezer is the motor powerful enough to mix the ice cream time after time?
- Spare Parts
Whichever type of ice cream freezer you choose it’s as well to make sure you can get spare parts for it, after all even the best machines can break down sometimes, but if that should happen you should at least be able to repair it. There’s nothing worse than having to junk an otherwise good piece of equipment just because you can’t replace on broken part.
Check out my full review of the White Mountain electric ice cream freezer and see if it fits the bill for you.