American stomach: The dessert machine that's a toy, too

If we are to believe the folks at Industrial Revolution Inc., making ice cream is just as fun as eating it.

Right.

But just for the heck of it, I decided to play along and ordered their $29 Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker, a freakish looking rigid plastic ball that didn't convince me it was up to either task -- fun or making ice cream.

Here's how it works. Imagine the round, floating torture droid that had its way with Princess Leia in the original Star Wars. Now imagine it dressed for Mardi Gras. This is our ice-cream maker.

A screw-top hatch opens into a one-pint metal chamber (where you put the ice-cream ingredients) inside the ball. A second hatch opens into the rest of the ball. This is where you fill the ball with ice, which is supposed to freeze the ice cream.

Uh-huh.

This is where it supposedly gets fun. According to the directions, you should "Have a ball! Shake, roll and pass it around as you mix and freeze the ingredients." And the fun doesn't stop there. "This is a great time for kids to sing songs, tell jokes or come up with some fun games while shaking and passing the ball."

Will the entertainment never stop?

My wife and I are veterans of many batches of homemade ice cream and have burned through several devices for making it during our seven years of marriage. Along the way, we've learned a few things.

1. Homemade ice cream is to store-bought ice cream as cream is to fat-free milk. In other words, it's worth the trouble.

2. There are many ice-cream makers on the market. Most that cost under $500 suck.

3. There are many ice-cream recipes; most are more complicated than they need to be. At its heart, ice cream is cream and sugar.

We became devoted ice-cream makers following a trip to Italy, during which we experienced gelato. Ever since, we have labored to make the perfect batch.

We started out as manual as it gets -- mix ingredients, pour into a shallow pan and freeze, stirring every few minutes for several hours. Even if it hadn't come out horribly icy, no ice cream is worth that effort.

From there we progressed to a series of devices, most costing about $30 and involving a metal canister similar to those mugs with liquid in the sides so they can be frozen to keep drinks cool.

Though those ice-cream makers produced better results, they allowed for no spontaneity (the canister needs to be frozen overnight before using it) and still required churning by hand.

So two years ago -- when my wife was pregnant at the height of summer, not coincidentally -- we splurged and bought a self-freezing gelato maker imported from Italy. Add the ingredients, flip a switch and 45 minutes later you've got wonderful ice cream.

With a few caveats.

We've yet to encounter an ice-cream maker of any variety that produces freezer-firm product. Think soft serve. And while the directions say 45 minutes, an hour is more like it.

I don't care. It was worth all 300 of the dollars we paid.

Having been through all this, I was dubious that Industrial Revolution's ice-cream ball was up to the task. To test it, I brought it on a recent family vacation at which there would be a handful of toddlers who love throwing things.

While my son and nephew watched, I followed the directions, adding a mixture of cream, vanilla and sugar to the ball's interior canister, then filling the rest of it with ice and salt (which, contrary to common belief, helps the ice freeze).

That's when the children lost interest. Our best efforts failed to interest either boy to so much as touch the ball -- never mind sing songs, roll it around, or otherwise enjoy themselves. In the end, my brother-in-law and I kicked it back and forth across the living room for the prescribed 20 minutes while my father-in-law watched golf on television and muttered, "This is fun?"

It wasn't fun. It was kind of tiring. But when we opened it up, the ice cream was awesome. Creamy, thick, rich and -- most important -- frozen. Well, soft-serve frozen, but still frozen. And since even our $300 model struggles to do better, that's not bad.

So I owe the folks at Industrial Revolution an apology. My doubts we unfounded. Their ice-cream maker, much as it looks like a neon pinata for a gay-pride march, really does work. As for fun? Does it count that I enjoyed coming up with descriptive analogies?

---

asap columnist J.M. Hirsch covers food, diet and nutrition for the AP. E-mail him at jhirschap.org.

---

Want to comment? Sound off at mailto:soundoffasapap.org.