This tart frozen yogurt tastes exactly like Pinkberry’s version.
Photo: Lauren Ro
I love ice cream, but my tastes are simple. Häagen-Dazs’s coffee is my absolute favorite, while a cone of Van Leeuwen’s Earl Grey Tea is what I order when I’m out. (Honorable mention goes to Ashley’s Coffee Oreo flavor, available only in New Haven.) I also love soft serve, but only from McDonald’s, and I’m a die-hard fan of tart frozen yogurt from Pinkberry and 16 Handle. So when the opportunity to test the new Ninja Swirl by Creami came up, I wondered if I could re-create McDonald’s vanilla soft serve at home. Would my version of 16 Handles’ Euro Tart be as satisfying?
The Ninja Swirl by Creami, an upgrade of the brand’s popular ice-cream maker, Ninja Creami, is not like traditional ice-cream makers: It doesn’t use a freezer bowl, nor does it come with a built-in freezer compressor. Instead, you freeze your ice-cream mixture overnight, then spin it in the machine, which uses a blade (the Creamerizer Paddle) that lowers into the frozen block and breaks down the mixture while simultaneously aerating it. (My chef friend told me that it’s like the home version of a Pacojet, a fancy appliance used in restaurants to micro-purée frozen foods.) The Swirl includes an extractor that turns the ice cream into soft serve.
I started researching soft serve and Froyo recipes online and saw that most of them were on TikTok, which I do not use. I thought I was missing out on ice-cream innovation until I tried the recipes (over 30 of them) that came with the Swirl and realized that it really doesn’t take much to make a tasty frozen treat.
Take Ninja’s interpretation of Signature Vanilla Soft Serve. Just six ingredients: sugar, milk powder, xanthan gum, whole milk, heavy cream, and vanilla extract. I did have to make a special trip to my local grocery store to get the milk powder and xanthan gum (a naturally derived thickening and stabilizing agent), but they’re not exotic ingredients by any means. I zapped the mixture in the microwave for 45 seconds to make sure the sugar dissolved, but that was the extent of the labor involved. I poured it into the pint container and popped it in the basement freezer overnight.
Twenty-four hours later, it was ready to be processed. The pint goes into an outer bowl, which clicks into a platform that you raise to meet the motor above. First select your mode (soft serve or scoop), then choose from one of the 13 one-touch programs, including seven scooped treats (ice cream, sorbet, gelato, milkshake, etc.) and six types of soft serve (custard, fruit whip, high protein, etc.). Wait four minutes or so for the ice cream to be spun (it is very loud), then remove. If the mixture looks a little icy, you can use the “Re-spin” button to try to get a creamier consistency. Take out the pint, screw on the dispensing lid, then put the whole thing into the extractor. Pull the lever to swirl. I was out the night my husband and kids made the ice cream. “Dude it tastes almost exactly like McDonald’s soft serve,” he texted me. “I left a little for you.”
From left: Making vanilla soft serve and tart frozen yogurt. Photo: Lauren RoPhoto: Lauren Ro
From top: Making vanilla soft serve and tart frozen yogurt. Photo: Lauren RoPhoto: Lauren Ro
A couple of days later, I tried Ninja’s recipe for Classic Tart Frozen Yogurt. Just four ingredients this time, most of them whole: yogurt, buttermilk, lemon juice, and sugar. It tasted like Euro Tart. I was gobsmacked.
I would be happy to make only these two recipes over and over again, but the Swirl is capable of so much more. You can even add mix-ins to scooped ice cream; my next project is to replicate Ashley’s Coffee Oreo ice cream. My family and I don’t have any food allergies, but the Swirl would be great for people who do, as you can customize your ice cream to be dairy free and vegan, and there are quite a few recipes in the booklet that use coconut milk and other alternative milks instead. There’s also guidance on dairy and sugar substitutions.
The Froyo after processing and before swirling.
Photo: Lauren Ro
The only dud I tried so far has been the peach-mango fruit whip. The recipe calls for canned peaches, mango, canned juice, coconut milk, and vanilla extract. I couldn’t find the peaches and the texture came out a little weird, likely from the canned mango being slimy. My kids didn’t mind it, but I think I would have better luck with the tropical fruit-whip recipe, which calls for frozen fruit chunks instead of canned fruit.
Mixing the ingredients literally takes less than five minutes, but you do have to factor in the overnight freezing time. You could cheat and put store-bought ice cream into the extractor to get soft serve instantly, though I have yet to try this. Or if you don’t feel like mixing anything at all, you could make one-ingredient fruit sorbet using canned fruit plus its juice frozen overnight. For a constant supply of ice cream without spending extra money on more pints, you could also theoretically freeze a bunch of mixtures in empty 16-ounce ice-cream containers, then transfer the frozen mixture into the Ninja pints for processing. (The Swirl comes with two.)
The machine is admittedly pretty large and bulky, but it’s honestly not that much wider than my Vitamix. And at the rate we’re churning out soft serve, I can’t see it leaving the counter anytime soon.
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