Tefal Dolci Ice Cream Maker reviewed: easy ice cream tomorrow

Ice cream machines are one of those appliances not everyone wants. But when you need ice cream, a fast gadget could be super helpful. Is the Tefal Dolci ice cream maker the fast gadget your kitchen needs?

Warmer months demand cold treats, and as we head into the especially hot period known as summer, it’s no wonder that we’re looking at our freezer a little more longingly. It’s not just because it’s the end of the year, and ’tis the season and all that.

Rather, ’tis the season to indulge, and enjoy some of the fun things summer expects to be served: ice cream and gelato and sorbet and froyo and the like.

Truth be told, it’s always a good time for ice cream and gelato, provided you’re awake. There’s no season that you could match these menus for specifically, and we’ll take a frozen treat any day that we can, no excuse needed.

There is, of course, one excuse not to have it: you have none. Open the freezer and find no tubs or ice blocks, and voila, there’s no way you can simply indulge in iced desserts.

But what if there was a way? What if you had the ingredients to make a cold custard or an easy sorbet, and you could simply churn your way to frozen freedom?

For that, we turn to an ice cream maker, with Tefal adding something new to the pile, just in time for the warmer months in Australia.

What is the Tefal Dolci?

Somewhere between an ice cream maker and an ice shaver, the Tefal Dolci isn’t your typical frozen dessert maker. In what clearly feels like a response to Ninja’s frozen dessert makers, the Dolci uses a combination of liquid canisters that you freeze and a blunt metal blade to slice through the ice and make ice crystals in a sort of reverse way of making ice cream.

Like all food science, ice cream has science, as well, and it’s rather a lot about the sugar quantity, ingredient choice, plus the size of the ice crystals at the time of making it.

What does it do?

You’ll know that difference without necessarily understanding the science of ice cream from the texture of a granita versus that of a sorbet: both are made from water and sugar, but one has a soft icy texture while the other is smooth like an ice cream.

Different dessert types have different ice crystal sizes, and the size — which you can’t see with the naked eye — can make a difference into how the ice cream is textured and feels.

You can almost never see and feel it, though in the case of a slushy and granita, you clearly can, because they’re icy. However, ice cream tends to have small crystals and is milky, while gelato and sorbet tend to have much smaller crystals and are smoother overall. Science, people.

Normally, this comes from churning liquid in a frozen bowl, a process that gives you those tiny ice crystals.

But instead of relying on a frozen bowl and churning liquid into ice cream, the Tefal Dolci goes in reverse, asking you to freeze the liquid in a special bowl beforehand, and then having the Dolci use a special churning arm to slice through the frozen liquid, breaking up the ice so that the result is soft, or softer than a block of flavoured ice, anyway.

To do this, the machine uses a sort of elevator to move the ice block container higher through the machine, which in turn lowers the blade through the tub. Various speeds change the size and consistency of the ice, and you’re left with a type of ice that is now much softer and smaller, rather than the large block that froze from liquid you poured the day before.

It’s a little like shaving ice down, only you’re not shaving the ice, but rather softening little flakes of milk ice, fruit, or even soda straight from the bottle.

Of course, this is different from a regular ice cream maker.

How is it different from regular ice cream makers?

Ice cream makers typically come in two varieties: those with a freezable ice cream bowl and those without that rely on a compressor instead.

Regardless of whether the bowl needs to be frozen ahead of time, they both typically work the exact same way, gradually churning liquid in a frozen container, freezing what’s inside and making ice crystal of various sizes based on the length of the churn and the ingredients used in the ice cream mixture, with a little airflow to make it a little lighter overall.

Most ice cream recipes are made for these types of machines, and because Ice cream is a science, it makes the recipes repeatable in either variety.

So that was clearly one of the aspect we needed to test.

Does it do the job?

Before we got to that point, we tried a recipe or two out of the eBook Tefal offers alongside the Dolci. You also get three tins of Nesquik to work with — chocolate, strawberry, and banana — so there’s a bit of a starter kit for basic ice cream varieties.

They weren’t our favourite recipes, but they did the job, relying on a combination of condensed milk and cream cheese to build a strawberry ice cream that was nice, as well as a banana ice cream was easily edible, and still fairly soft and smooth, churn on the ice cream setting.

Each needs to be mixed together as a liquid and then poured into one of the 480ml tubs, sealed with a simple plastic lid and frozen in your freezer for use later.

You can switch out condensed for evaporated if your sugar content is a little higher, and to Tefal’s credit, you do get a few extras to help you on your way that have extra sugar content, with tins of banana, strawberry, and chocolate Nesquik in the box. A few spoonfuls of either will offer enough sugar for their respective ice cream flavours, if not having you bouncing off the walls or your kids, whoever comes first.

Each worked fine, and even when we intentionally changed aspects, such as replacing condensed milk for cream cheese, we found the Tefal Dolci did a decent job making ice cream.

We also tried simply pouring Coke into a canister and freezing it, churning it into a slushy the next day, which is the process for every frozen treat you run through the Dolci.

Every treat needs to be frozen before hand, making it an extra step, albeit a critical step to make the machine work for you. There’s no getting around it, really.

As a slushy, the ice crystals are obviously there, and the texture is soft yet slightly crunchy, the flavoured ice appearing almost like a granita until the air warms up and the ice melts slightly into a slushy appearance. It’s not quite as fizzy as the kind you’ll get at a 7/11 (Slurpee), or even the style found at a Maccas or the movies, but it does the job well enough.

Testing a variety of recipes

While eating the ice cream is clearly an important part of the tests, making it is, as well. Of particularly note was a question: would the Dolci be like a Thermomix in that its recipes are made specifically for the appliance?

Put simply, could any ice cream recipe work in the Tefal Dolci, or did you need special recipes?

We turned to one of our favourite ice cream books, the Ben & Jerry’s text on the matter, and moved to a more traditional sweet cream base, which is the kind you’d use in a conventional compressor or frozen-bowl ice cream maker.

Whipping this up ahead of time (the day before), the Tefal Dolci definitely cut the frozen blocks into ice cream and gelato using their respective settings, but gelato performed much better than ice cream.

With the ice cream setting, the ice crystals were soft but still there, and you can feel them in your teeth. But moving the process to gelato, and a batch of ice cream made with that same recipe became as smooth as the real thing, easily able to compete.

It’s not quite the same; concentrate and you’ll feel the texture lacks that same mouth-feel as professionally-made gelato, or even the variety a decent compressor ice cream machine can make, but the result was better than expected.

The Tefal Dolci does a great imitation of gelato, and pulls it off in just a few minutes, handling regular ice cream recipes with ease.

Ice cream, gelato, sorbet, and slushies aren’t all the Tefal Dolci handles, either. We tried a frozen yoghurt which was fine, but it can also handle milkshakes, frappes, and the odd frozen cocktail should you be that way inclined.

Around two minutes is all you needed for the Dolci to slice and dice the ice into gelato, while an extra minute or so for three total was needed for sorbet, which was the softest of the lot (we churned both matcha gelato and lemon gelato, a classic).

Its one special power is speed: provided you have the ice cream mixture pre-frozen, you can make ice cream in a cinch. It is so fast. Loud, but fast.

Tefal even makes it easy to clean, with a rinse cycle to help clear the cream and ingredients from the tubs, dishwasher-friendliness for a few parts, and an easy hand-wash and wipe-down for other bits. It’s quite easy to maintain.

What does it need?

But the downside, however, is you need to plan ahead.

One of the problems with the Tefal Dolci — and we suspect it will also be a problem with the similar Ninja Creami — is that it’s not as “instant” as a frozen-bowl ice cream maker when it comes to making impromptu ice cream.

You need to be at a level of 24 hours prepared for using the Dolci, because it only works with pre-frozen containers. Heaven forbid you’ve had a flash of inspiration and you’d like to make something for the family today.

Tough. This ice cream maker doesn’t cater for that at all. You can only make ice cream if something has been pre-frozen first. Think of the Tefal Dolci like a blender made specifically for turning frozen blocks into ice cream. That’s essentially what it is.

If the counter argument is “why not just grab a tub of ice cream from the local if you want that”, then he follow-up is “well why did I spend over $300 on an ice cream maker in the first place?”, a valid response and retort.

And that’s the problem with the Tefal Dolci and other ice cream makers: immediacy. It has none unless you’ve prepared by at least 24 hours.

It means if you want ice cream from the Dolci, you probably want to store some ice cream mixture containers in your freezer for days or weeks ahead. That would be fine.

But if you want it today and you haven’t prepared, you are literally out of luck.

Is it worth your money?

Perhaps the biggest question with the Tefal Dolci is the cost, which at $349 isn’t a terribly inexpensive ice cream machine, especially when you consider the cost and amount it makes.

For $349, you can make 480ml of ice cream at a time with the Dolci and up to 1.3 litres, because it comes with three containers. All this, by the way, provided you’ve frozen the liquid first.

By comparison, a machine where you need to freeze a large 2L tub costs about a third (around $100 to $130), and handles three times the amount. Like this model, you need to freeze the container ahead of time, but you don’t need to freeze it with the liquid inside, so can just leave it in the freezer until you need it.

Alternatively, there are the compressor models which don’t need you to freeze anything, and include a compressor to freeze your ice cream container. These are undoubtedly the best models to use, and can let you make batch after batch without needing to freeze or prepare anything prior.

And they don’t cost all that much more, either. In Australia, compressor-based ice cream makers run between $300 and $600 depending on who makes them. Tefal doesn’t have one, but Breville, Cuisinart, and other appliance makers do. They’re not altogether uncommon, nor are they much more expensive.

But they are more controllable and work for immediacy, plus the result you get tends to be better overall.

If anything, the fact that compressor-based ice cream makers can be found for near the $350 of the Tefal Dolci suggests this should be a little less expensive, and likely closer to the $250 to $280 mark. It’s not terrible value, but we’d rather spend a little bit extra to get a lot better, if only for the immediacy.

Tefal’s only major point of difference is that it takes two minutes when everything is prepared ahead of time. That’s not as big of a winning point as you might think, though, because it’s still ice cream tomorrow, not today.

Yay or nay?

Going into the Tefal Dolci review, we weren’t sure what to expect. Beyond ice cream. That was a given.

Coming from a compressor-based machine, we knew this one would be different, especially since it goes the opposite way from a regular ice cream maker, cutting ice into smaller particles, as opposed to churning them into ice crystals of various sizes.

Surprisingly, the result isn’t bad, and for most people will be quite close. The compressor ice cream maker option is typically better and affords more control, not to mention lets you churn ice cream any time, but Tefal’s take is also quite fine, provided you’re prepared.

It’s easy ice cream tomorrow, or today if you’ve thought about it in advance.

We’re still on the fence on price, and that’s a key factor in the score being a little lower. Four stars isn’t bad, but the $349 price point feels a little too high for what basically amounts to a frozen block blender.

But if you can find the Dolci for below $250, it would be a steal, given compressor machines aren’t far in price. At near $350, it’s difficult to argue for, but shave off a hundred, and the Tefal Dolci is a sweeter deal.