Science of Cooking: Ice Cream

awesome icecream and fun to make

It’s fun and exciting for a 4 years old kid but the rolling part to make it work seems to be too much for this age. My kid kept saying his arms were tired.

We are having so much fun with this kit and I expect we will use it for a long time. My kids are young so right now it is a family activity that they will do solo when they are older. The recipes are great! We regularly make icecream and have several recipes, but this may become our new go to recipe with an adjustment to the vanilla. Following the recipe the vanilla is very strong and we could even feel the burn of the alcohol; halving the amount of vanilla was more to our liking. The cook time for the experiment with stabilizers was also too long for us causing the mixture to "explode" in the microwave, but it made for a good note in our lab book. Overall I am pleased with the quality of the kit. I really like that the experiment/recipe book is somewhat laminated to be spill proof. However, the measurements on the small measuring cup started rubbing off after the first use, along with the silicone of the whisk cracking so a little disappointed those don't seem like they will hold up.

I purchased the Science of Cooking Ice Cream Crate as a gift for my 8-year old grandson, and he loved it! He is old enough to appreciate the chemistry involved, and even took lab notes at important points in the process (kudos for providing the Lab Notes tablet!) to share with his 2nd grade classmates at school. Fun was had by all in making the ice cream - Charlie’s 5-yr old little sister joined in, too - and in the end we had some delicious vanilla ice cream … wonderful!

My daughter loved making her own ice cream. She thought it was the coolest thing to do. Def recommend doing this if you have a curious child. We loved it!

I wish I could leave 4.5 stars. This product is really well thought out--we love KiwiCo in general. But the one thing I noticed in other reviews was how hard it was to find rock salt. I found this to be potentially problematic as a gift-giver and a parent, because I know first hand that setting up to do these kinds of projects with your kids can already feel like a huge undertaking, and I didn't want to add to that by sending my giftee's parents on a scavenger hunt to find rock salt just to get started. But when I opened the box, I realized there was actually plenty of breathing room to include some starter packs of rock salt, and decided to add my own. Luckily the packaging allows you to open and close it without damage. I tracked down some rock salt and these 4x6" ziploc bags. I put 1 cup of rock salt into each bag (I noticed most of the recipes call for 1 cup). I placed the filled bags at the bottom of the box and placed the (included) tissue paper on top of that. Everything fits perfectly so long as you group the rock salt to the side opposite the larger clear jar. I know they’ll need to buy more rock salt if they continue using the kit, but I feel better gifting this knowing they’ll at least be able to get started right away. This should be enough to try 3 recipes from the cookbook. Being that rock salt is shelf stable and quite cheap, I hope KiwiCo considers including it in these kits in the future. Especially given that they could include at least 3 cups as shown without affecting any other packaging.