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While many people opt to buy pints of ice cream at the grocery store or get it from an ice cream shop, you can make ice cream in almost any flavor from the comfort of your own home. There is perhaps no easier way to do this than with a Ninja CREAMi machine. Ninja is known for its small kitchen appliances, including blenders, air fryers, and espresso machines. The brand’s CREAMi machine makes ice cream and other frozen treats at the press of a button, with Ninja advertising its seven functions: ice cream, lite, sorbet, gelato, milkshake, smoothie bowl, and mix-in. Tasting Table did a full review of the gadget and enjoyed the treats made with it, especially the frozen hot chocolate. However, while we mostly used the recipes that come with the CREAMi machine itself, many fan-made recipes online use an ingredient these selections lack: pudding mix.
Pudding mix serves a few helpful functions when used in a CREAMi machine. For one, it contains gum (typically xanthan or guar), which makes the ice cream thicker and creamier. We had complained of iciness specifically when making sorbet in the CREAMi machine, and pudding mix also helps to reduce this problem. Pudding mix also comes in a wide variety of flavors, making it easier to flavor your ice cream without figuring out all the ratios yourself.
Why do fan-made recipes often include pudding mix but not official ones?
As a user on Reddit posted out, many Ninja CREAMi recipes you’ll find online use pudding mix, while the recipes Ninja endorses typically do not. Rather, as we noted, the official Ninja recipe for vanilla ice cream uses cream cheese and heavy cream as an emulsifier instead. This, of course, begs the question; why the disparity?
Another Reddit user suggested that recipes swap some of the cream or cream cheese for pudding mix for diet purposes, likely to reduce the amount of fat in the recipe. Another noted that pudding mix is low cost and low calorie, making it a double whammy for people looking to save money and reduce the caloric intake of their dessert. You can even get it in sugar-free varieties, another bonus. Adding pudding mix can also be helpful when making dairy-free ice cream, as plant-based milks often have a lower fat content and therefore may not come out as creamy without extra ingredients.
Ninja’s official recipes are likely meant to mimic traditional ice cream as much as possible to show off the effectiveness of its machine, which is likely why it uses the more traditional ingredient of heavy cream. However, what recipe you choose to follow is up to you. If you can’t have dairy or want to try an interesting flavor of ice cream, consider making a recipe involving pudding mix. While there are a lot of mistakes you can make with your Ninja CREAMi, a pudding mix recipe isn’t one of them.
