A Quick Ice Cream Fix

Home made ice cream is always a treat but a chore to make.It's getting the salt, making a large batch and then waiting for hours for the finished product. However there's  a gadget that will remedy it.  The Zoku  Ice Cream Maker is a neat - yes, neat and fun addition to any ice cream lover's kitchen.

Zoku not only makes this ice cream makers, it manufactures other fun household items from their Hoboken,, New Jersey offices and factory. The company basically started with a simple idea - how to make popsicles freeze faster. The answer was the Quick Pop Maker which gives a perfectly formed, perfectly frozen pop.(they've since expanded it to make stenciled pops and a pop kit where you can make multi flavored popsicles).The company has won several design awards and have even been included in the Henry Ford Museum as well as in  the Chicago Athenaeum Museum For Architecture and Design. Their dino-Pop Molds are cute enough with Lucy the Cavegirl along with a mini T  Rex
an other dinosaurs. Zoku also makes deep sea ,polar and outer space themed molds,perfect for parents who want their little ones to have healthy treats. They have truly cool slushie makers that can even give you a great iced coffee. I bought the ice cream maker that can also makes Italian ice as well.I  bought it off Amazon  but they can also be found at Sur La Table, Williams & Sonoma along with the Zoku website itself.

Is the Zoku easy to make? Yes, if you;re making ice cream. The actual bowl, (there's two, an exterior  sleeve that's plastic and you could put the ice cream in it after it's been made) and an interior bowl. This is where it happens.It's composed of a plastic exterior and a metallic inner one. filled with a refrigerant liquid.

Place the inner bowl in the fridge overnight  for twelve or more hours. I made a non dairy sherbet  with almond milk, pureed strawberries and agave syrup. I had started out with the idea of ice cream but the almond milk was too thin. It did make for a nice fruity dessert that fluffed up nicely when shaved. I then tried that summer classic.Italian lemon ice. This was a bit more involved to make.  The recipe had to be amended to  suit the bowl's size. Three lemons were peeled (yes, peeled, which resulted in bloody fingers surprisingly ) cut up and then pulverized in my mini processor. A simple syrup had to be made with white sugar and water. Then the lemon mash has to be strained to get rid of the pits and pulp .It's added, cooked for a few minutes in a soupy kind of mix and then poured into the bowl. It has to be cooled in the fridge for two hours before it's poured in the inner bowl. I didn't stir it with he accompanying paddle spoon. I let it freeze overnight  to look like

It wasn't white. It wasn't fluffy. It was too tart. In other words  better luck next time.


The Zoku Ice Cream Bowl screams to be tried out again. Next time.I am going to try the traditional vanilla ice cream one. Should be easy. and a true treat to make.