I Waited My Whole Life for the Ninja Soft Serve Machine

It's every kid's dream to turn their kitchen into an ice cream parlor for the day. Hell, that's the adult version of the dream, the kids want to live there. That fantasy is what made Ninja's CREAMi ice cream maker such a hit on TikTok and beyond. It was an ice cream maker anyone could afford and learn to use in their home. When I heard there was a new one that let you make soft serve it was the beginning of the summer and I could tell this may just be my latest kitchen game-changer (I have a lot, don't worry).

Look, this isn't just a TikTok trend, the CREAMi Swirl is the real deal ice cream making and dispensing machine you can get for your home. It's bigger and louder, with more options than the original, the most obvious and groundbreaking being that now every pint container doubles as a soft swirl dispenser. Turning your Ninja into a machine for froyo, homemade soft serve, and so much more.

Since bringing the CREAMi Swirl home I've been surprised, above all else, how much fun it's been. I never thought I'd be able to bring my love of cooking and baking so easily to the art of crafting ice cream flavors and concocting frozen desserts. Rarely does a gadget allow that without getting in the way of itself. The CREAMi Swirl does that, and while it's not flawless, it's been a perfect fit in my home.

Ninja Swirl by CREAMi®

Pros

• Creates yummy scoop ice cream and soft serve
• Makes it easy to make healthy and dairy free frozen desserts
• Plenty of recipes with simple ingredients included, from protein ice cream to froyo
• Every piece is helpfully labeled out of the box
• Easy to clean
• Making your own ice cream is pure joy

Cons

• Requires roughly 24 hours of preperation
• Very loud when mixing
• Soft serve can be icy and melt quickly

So what's it actually like to use the thing? Well, for starters, out of the box every piece is helpfully labeled—over a month later a few of those stickers are still on there—and there is minimum assembly required. We would discover cleaning was just as easy as detaching parts and giving a good soak/scrub in soap and water. Only once so far has the inside of the machine require any cleaning or wiping out whatsoever—the machine is wonderful at helping keep mess inside the containers or on the drip tray.

It comes with a lengthy paper recipe book (or a QR code to scan to see it on your phone) which encourages you to start with its most simple recipes. The first genuine roadblock you'll encounter, especially if you are not the patient type, is that every recipe requires "24 hours" of freezing before you can enjoy your "instant" soft serve. In reality, freezing doesn't take quite that long, but you're looking at 12 to 14 hours on the quicker side. Meaning yes, there is some level of prep you will need to do. The Swirl comes with two containers so you can at least prep two flavors at once—or more if you buy extras.

Once you've frozen your mixture completely, it's go time. First, you secure your pint in the mixing bowl, making sure the paddle lid is secured and then snapping it into place with a satisfying, and reassuring, click. From there, you can get mixing with just two button presses on the machine, soft serve and then ice cream in the case of my first attempt at chocolate soft serve. You can also choose the "scoop" ice cream option, which allows for additional mix-ins for your Ben and Jerry's style pint.

This is the most impressive part of the process, watching this relatively small machine churn my mixture to ice cream. It's also the noisiest. This is the part where the CREAMi gets vacuum cleaner loud and yeah, it makes it hard to watch TV or do anything else for the next few minutes in my apartment. The results are worth it though, and from there it's just a matter of removing the pint, affixing the dispenser lid, and inserting the pint into the dispensing side of the machine.

This all works electronically and automatically once it detects a full pint. From there, it's time to open the twisting bottom of the container and prepare to hit the lever. Even the lever you pull to dispense the product works electronically, not mechanically dispensing but telling the mechanism instead to push or stop pushing. Make sure you've got your bowl or cone prepped and remember it will continue to dispense one to two seconds after you let go.

I'm genuinely proud of what I've made with this thing. One of the starter recipes in the included booklet is for salted caramel ice cream. What it doesn't say is to make your own (admittedly delicious) caramel from scratch and use that to make an arguably even more delicious soft serve.

These easy recipes don't require xantham gum or any other fancy ingredients (although other recipes in the book do). Instead, I've followed it's suggestions and used a tablespoon of instant pudding mix (very affordable and plentiful) per recipe to get that desired soft serve texture. We're not dairy free, but we do only keep oat milk in the house so we wound up using a mixture of heavy cream and oat milk for all our soft serves. It helped us make stuff that is lighter on the dairy and likely also healthier than most of what we can buy in a store. At very least there is something extremely reassuring about knowing every ingredient that has gone into your ice cream.

The results have been, unanimously, really tasty. Flavor isn't the issue, it's the consistency that is tougher to make store-like. The soft serves I have made have been texturally very sound, although they can tend to be more icy than creamy. The bigger problem is that after all the mixing and dispensing is done (at room temperature), the results are often a bit meltier than I'd want.

I've also tried making frozen yogurt by straight up scooping Trader Joe's yogurts into the container and freezing it. It worked perfectly, a yummy healthy dessert. My most daring creation was an attempt to recreate the famous Doll Whip of my youthful memories in Disney World. The Swirl even has a button for fruit whips and—using pineapples, juice, and coconut milk—I made an extremely passable facsimile of my childhood favorite frozen dessert.

I've emphasized health a lot, because there is also a ton you can do with adding protein to your desserts, from protein ice cream to milkshakes. This is not my personal fitness kick, but it's a big appeal for a growing base of health conscious people who realize they don't need to entirely give up on what they love to make good choices.

If I haven't made it abundantly clear already, I love my Ninja soft serve machine. It's the gadget that's defining my summer with homemade ice cream every movie night. For anyone who loves hosting, or experimenting with food, it will make an amazing addition to the kitchen.

Ninja Swirl by CREAMi®

Pros

• Creates yummy scoop ice cream and soft serve
• Makes it easy to make healthy and dairy free frozen desserts
• Plenty of recipes with simple ingredients included, from protein ice cream to froyo
• Every piece is helpfully labeled out of the box
• Easy to clean
• Making your own ice cream is pure joy

Cons

• Requires roughly 24 hours of preperation
• Very loud when mixing
• Soft serve can be icy and melt quickly