Ninja’s dessert appliances are all the rage right now. From its Ninja creami ice cream maker to the Ninja slushi, people can’t get enough of appetising household appliances that turn our kitchens into bona fide dessert parlours.
But the one thing that’s always put me off the Ninja creami is that you essentially have to plan your cravings ahead of time, and who can plan those? The Ninja creami requires pre-freezing your creations for 24 hours before you can even turn it into ice cream, and nobody’s got time for that when you want ice cream pronto. So when I heard ProBreeze had launched an ice cream machine that can do it in as little as 30 minutes, I had to give it a whirl.
The ProBreeze easyfreezy is a two-in-one soft-serve ice cream and slushie maker, which can also whip up frappes and milkshakes. It costs £179.99, which is a lot less than buying a Ninja creami and Ninja slushi separately. I’ve spent the past few weeks putting it through its paces, making everything from classic vanilla soft serve to frozen drinks to find out whether it’s worth the purchase.
Read more: Best ice cream makers, reviewed
Read more: Ninja creami deluxe vs Cuisinart freeze wand
ProBreeze easyfreezy
Why we love it
- Makes ice cream without pre-freezing
- Delicious, creamy soft serve
- Makes slushies, milkshakes and frappes too
- Easy to use
- Adjustable consistency levels
- Dedicated cleaning cycle
Take note
- Recipes require at least 6 per cent sugar
- Can’t add solid ingredients
- Soft serve is messy to dispense
- Large and heavy
- Parts aren’t dishwasher safe
Pulling the easyfreezy out of the box, there’s no doubt it’s a tall, hulking (and very heavy) machine. That’s fine if you’ve got plenty of counter space and don’t mind keeping it there, but otherwise you’re going to have to lug its 7.5kg body out of a cupboard every time you want some ice cream – if you can even fit it in there.
That said, once you do get it out, it’s one of the easiest appliances to set up. There’s the machine itself, the 800ml jug that churns your recipes and a removable drip tray that sits beneath the dispenser to catch any spills – of which there will be many when dispensing ice cream.
There’s a little bit of assembly involved, but it’s pretty simple. Once you’ve poured your mixture into the tub, the paddle slots inside, before you line the whole thing up with the front of the easyfreezy and twist it anticlockwise to lock it into place. There’s also a sliding dispenser at the bottom of the tub, which you slide open when you’re ready to serve. The whole thing takes a matter of seconds.
There’s also a small opening in the jug’s handle that lets you add extra ingredients while the easyfreezy is running. It’s very stiff to open, however.
Weirdly, the drip tray doesn’t actually click into place. I often kept it detached because it had a habit of sliding off whenever I moved the appliance around.
Functions
Because of its height, it can be tricky to reach the controls, but it’s a doddle to use. Everything is controlled using the touch-sensitive panel on top, with seven presets for ice cream, slushies, fruit slushies, cocktails, margaritas, frappes and milkshakes, plus a separate cleaning mode. If you don’t like the consistency that the presets produce, you can hit the plus and minus buttons to adjust it. Milkshakes too thick? Hit the minus button to thin it out.
The digital display shows the current setting and temperature. Once you’ve popped in your mixture and hit the mode, just tap on the start button and off you go. Thankfully, it’s not ear-numbingly loud as it churns – my Ninja blender and robot vacuum cleaner are way louder.
I’ve used almost all of the various modes while testing out this machine, and I made delicious drinks and ice cream with all of them – genuinely. But a nagging feeling tells me one of the reasons everything tastes so good is because of the ‘S’ word. The easyfreezy requires sugar – there’s simply no getting around it.
If you’re like me and have cut down on your sugar intake entirely, or you’re trying desperately to do so, then this machine is basically a no-go.
Every recipe needs to contain at least 6 per cent sugar for the machine to work, which works out at 36g of sugar in a 600ml batch or 48g in an 800ml batch. That doesn’t necessarily mean adding spoonfuls of the stuff yourself – ingredients such as condensed milk, fruit juice or full-fat fizzy drinks can provide the required sugar.
That sugar requirement also applies to cocktails and margaritas, which also need a further alcohol content of between 6 and 16 per cent to freeze properly. It doesn’t appear you can use artificial sweeteners as a substitute either, so if you’ve cut out sugar, you probably won’t get on with the easyfreezy.
Another downside is that you can’t add solid ingredients to the easyfreezy, so don’t go chucking chocolate chips, chunks of fruit, Hundreds and Thousands or crushed Oreos into the jug, no matter how much you want to.
ProBreeze specifically warns against adding solid ingredients while the machine is running. They can get stuck in the paddle and could even damage the appliance. You can obviously fold fruit, biscuits and sprinkles into your ice cream once it’s finished, but it’s not exactly the machine doing it for you.
That also meant I had to melt caster sugar before mixing in all my ingredients – it’s ridiculously hard to find sugar cane syrup in the UK (which is what most of ProBreeze’s recipes recommend).
The Ninja creami, on the other hand, is way better at handling solid ingredients, boasting a dedicated mix-in function that folds them into the finished ice cream for you.
But how exactly does the easyfreezy actually make ice cream without pre-freezing? Unlike the creami, the easyfreezy has a compressor inside that continually chills your ingredients as the paddle churns. When the temperature inside falls, the mixture eventually freezes and thickens until it reaches your desired consistency. In the case of vanilla ice cream, it takes just 30 minutes.
The Ninja creami, on the other hand, blades its way through your frozen recipes, eventually churning them into a smooth, creamy consistency.
It’s the ProBreeze’s ability to go from liquid to ice cream over a single lunch hour that makes the easyfreezy so appealing, but how good is it really?
Onto the dessert making. To get you up and running, ProBreeze includes a recipe card in the box – there are only three recipes on there, but there are loads more on the site. My first test was, of course, some delicious soft-serve vanilla ice cream.
Ice cream
You just need four ingredients for vanilla ice cream – 150ml of whole milk, 350ml of single cream, 100ml of sugar cane syrup and 2.5ml of vanilla extract. I substituted the sugar cane syrup for caster sugar, melting it first to avoid solids. You have to use exactly 600ml because that’s both the minimum and maximum capacity for ice cream.
After mixing all the ingredients into the bowl, I poured the mixture into the tub, popped in the paddle and twisted it onto the easyfreezy before selecting the ice cream preset. I left to watch the football and let it do its job. Thirty minutes later, the appliance beeped to tell me my ice cream was ready to serve.
And what it served was absolutely delicious, tasting exactly like a 99p soft-serve ice cream you get from a Mr Whippy ice cream van. Smooth, creamy and whipped-like.
Getting it out of the machine, however, is a different story. Dispensing ice cream from the easyfreezy is very messy. You have to line up your ice cream cone with the hole extremely precisely, and once the ice cream gets near the top of the cone, it starts spooling out over the edges instead of heaping up into those satisfying swirls you’d get from an ice cream van.
The slider at the bottom of the tub essentially opens up the dispenser, but the ice cream doesn’t come out in a controlled stream. It got all over my hands and onto the drip tray below. I find myself wiping everything down pretty much every time I use it. I wish it had a dispensing handle for more precise control, because the slider makes it difficult to control how much ice cream comes out at once. Still, it tasted delicious.
Slushies
Slushies are ridiculously easy to make with the easyfreezy. This one was a doddle – I just poured two cans of full-fat Coca-Cola straight into the tub, selected the slushie preset and hit start.
After around 35 minutes, I had a Coca-Cola slushie to rival a Slush Puppy I’d get at the funfair. Perfectly icy, perfectly sweet and just what I wanted on a hot summer’s day. Thankfully, slushies are much easier to dispense into a glass as well – they come out much more smoothly. Two cans of Coca-Cola made about two glasses of slushie.
Milkshakes and frappes
I’ve tried two milkshake and frappe recipes, and both turned out super thick and creamy. For the latter, I tried ProBreeze’s classic coffee frappe recipe, which combines coffee with whole milk, single cream, sugar and vanilla extract. It took around 40 minutes, but it was worth the wait, with a thick consistency. Chilled and indulgent, it tasted just like something from Starbucks.
For the milkshake, I made a strawberry version using whole milk, single cream, vanilla extract, sugar and Askeys Treat strawberry sauce. Again, it came out satisfyingly thick and creamy, but the strawberry flavour did taste a little artificial. That’s largely because you have to use a smooth syrup or sauce – you can’t just throw in some fresh strawberries into the machine, so it’s never going to have quite the same fresh, fruity taste as a milkshake made in a blender.
Cleaning and maintenance
It’s nice that the easyfreezy has a dedicated cleaning mode. Once you’re finished serving up your desserts, just dispense anything that’s left, fill the tub with clean water and run the cleaning cycle. It rinses out the inside of the machine. You can then dispense the dirty water through the same opening at the bottom.
You’ll still need to clean everything afterwards – this is just a helpful step to get rid of the main layer of cream or milk. Give it a good wash in the sink with hot, soapy water for a proper clean. It’s not dishwasher safe, and you’ll really need to get into the grooves in the slider to get it properly clean, but it didn’t take me too long.
Key specifications
Buy now £179.99, Amazon.co.uk
Should you buy the Probreeze easyfreezy?
There are a few trade-offs when going for the ProBreeze easyfreezy over the Ninja creami – namely the amount of sugar required and the inability to add solid ingredients. It’s also a hulking machine, and that slider makes dispensing soft serve horribly messy.
But if you’re an ice cream-aholic and don’t mind eating sugar, the easyfreezy makes amazing ice cream, and it does it all in around 30 minutes without any pre-freezing. I don’t ever have to decide that I want ice cream tomorrow, prepare a tub and leave it in the freezer overnight. I can decide I want some now and be eating it within a lunch hour.
And for £180, you’re getting an ice cream maker, slushie machine, milkshake maker and frozen drinks machine in one single appliance. The Ninja creami deluxe costs £249.99 and requires pre-freezing, and I’m impatient. I think the Ninja creami is more versatile in terms of the ingredients you can use, but the easyfreezy is great for those who don’t want any delayed gratification. If you’ve got the counter space, don’t mind the sugar requirement and want delicious soft serve without having to plan a day ahead, the easyfreezy is for you.
How I tested the ProBreeze easyfreezy
I spent several weeks testing the ProBreeze easyfreezy at home, putting almost all of its different presets through their paces. During the testing period, I considered the following criteria.
Why you can trust IndyBest reviews
Alex Lee is IndyBest's tech editor. He's been reviewing consumer technology for a decade and has put hundreds of devices through real-world testing, from fitness trackers to headphones and much more. Every product is used as part of his everyday routine and judged on how it performs in daily life, helping readers find the gadgets and appliances that are worth buying.
Want more kitchen upgrades? Check out our review of the Ninja creami swirl
