However, until very recently, it had absolutely never occurred to me, not even once, that I might want to own a home soft-serve machine. In fact, I didn’t even have any interest in making ice cream at home at all, and thought it sounded laborious and unnecessary… until my TikTok #fyp became inundated with content surrounding a very popular machine called the Ninja Creami.
As a longtime food and commerce writer, I’ve reviewed everything from full-size refrigerators and high-end espresso machines to gummy candy (I also have a major sweet tooth). With this convergence of experience and interests, the Creami Swirl fell firmly within my purview and area of coverage, and was the first home ice cream machine that really compelled me. After a preliminary spin, I can confirm that while it’s big, it’s loud, and it costs $350, it can do some pretty amazing things. Here’s my honest review.
First impressions…
The unboxing process for the Swirl, while exciting, was also intimidating. At about 21 pounds, the Swirl is a bit lighter than a KitchenAid stand mixer (weighing in at 26 pounds), and similar in terms of counter footprint. While the original Creami’s footprint is roughly that of a medium-sized coffee machine, the Swirl is nearly twice its width to accommodate the soft-serve dispensing function, which also includes a large handle on the right side of the machine. At over 17 inches tall, it clears the underside of my kitchen cabinets by less than two inches, so be aware that you might have to get creative with where you keep it or position it.
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The Swirl has — quite literally — a lot of moving parts. In addition to the main machine, in the box, there are two pint containers, an external container, a Creamerizer paddle, a drip tray, a few different lids, and stickers on everything encouraging you to scan QR codes to get started. Unfortunately, I am personally allergic to QR codes and would rather stick to an instruction manual, so I decided to commit to learning everything through paper, words, and trial and error.
Setting the Swirl up
If you’ve never used a Creami machine before, know that you have to make your ice cream base recipe and freeze it overnight before you can truly get started, so you will have to plan ahead (by one day, anyway). Because the Swirl comes with two pints, I decided to prepare two opening recipes to taste- and texture-test: the Ninja-recommended classic chocolate soft-serve recipe, and a protein ice cream recipe, since that’s such a point of appeal for so many Creami devotees. For the latter, I took the simple two-ingredient format from this recipe and started with a Premier Protein shake in Cake Batter flavor; I added pistachio-flavored Jell-O instant pudding mix instead of vanilla for a little added jazz and pizzazz. I froze the bases overnight in the pint containers (it says to freeze them for 24 hours, but close enough), and they emerged ready to churn the following day.
Identifying the pint containers and storage lids had been simple enough, but I was nervous to take the many stickers off the rest of the machine for fear that I’d miss an important step. Thankfully, if you look VERY CLOSELY at the illustrations in the instruction booklet and try as hard as humanly possible not to be lazy or stupid and mistake one part for another, you’ll figure things out in just a few minutes, although I wouldn’t exactly say “intuitively.” There is a lot of twisting, pulling, and remembering which way is counterclockwise. None of it’s actually difficult, and after the first run, it got exponentially easier. By the second batch of ice cream, I was moving much faster and with far less apprehension that I was going to miss a step.
What are the new features on the Ninja Swirl by CREAMi?
Let’s break it down.
The latest-model standard Ninja Creami has seven different settings: ice cream, sorbet, lite ice cream, smoothie bowl, gelato, milkshake, and mix-in.
The Creami Deluxe — also called the Creami XL Deluxe — has 11 settings: ice cream, sorbet, lite ice cream, gelato, milkshake, frozen yogurt, Italian ice, frozen drink, “slushi,” “creamiccino,” and mix-in. The Deluxe also has 24-ounce tubs vs. the 16-ounce pints used in the other machines (thus the XL), so it can make larger batches of ice cream, as well as the option to spin only the top or bottom of the tub, which is a cool feature if you want to do a multi-layered creation.
