Ninja CREAMi Swirl Review: Our Honest Take On The Viral Soft-Serve Maker

For years now, I’ve hauled out my Cuisinart 2-quart ice cream maker every spring to start the season with a spruce tip or rhubarb ice cream. While there are no-churn recipes of almost any ice cream flavour you can think of, one thing these versions can’t replicate is the smooth, creamy texture of a properly churned pint: since the fats and sugars are frozen while being consistently mixed, you end up with a softer, airier result.

This longstanding belief has kept me from dipping into the viral sensation that is the Ninja CREAMi and its more recently released counterpart, the Ninja CREAMi Swirl, two blender-style machines that promise super-smooth ice creams, frozen yogurts, sorbets—and in the case of the Swirl, even soft serve. Every time a video of someone making a protein shake into a scoop of high-protein dessert appeared on my timeline, I’d keep scrolling. I liked my Cuisinart just fine!

However, it’s been a couple of years since the Ninja CREAMi Swirl first launched and its popularity hasn’t abated. Clearly, there is something to this kitchen appliance! When I got the chance to test one out in my own kitchen, I figured it was worth putting up against my Cuisinart. This Ninja CREAMi Swirl ice cream maker review is my real take on the machine.

How does the Ninja CREAMi work?

In both its original and Swirl iterations, think of the Ninja CREAMi as a massive blender specifically designed to blitz frozen, pre-mixed ice cream base into specific textures, whether that's a smooth, scoopable dairy-based ice cream or a crunchier, crystal-like treat like a granita. Both models require you to mix ingredients (sometimes pre-blended, sometimes not) in the appliance’s modular plastic tub and pop it in the freezer for 12 to 24 hours before blending, depending on the recipe. Once ready, a lid with a stainless steel blending attachment is locked onto the tub, and the tub itself is locked into the CREAMi, where you can choose a specific blending function to blitz.

What makes the Swirl model different?

The Swirl is an upgrade from the original CREAMi in countertop footprint and blending presets (at a steeper price). The wide array of blending presets allows you to tailor your blending to a base filled with, say, yogurt or protein powder. But the biggest difference is what the name promises: an added dispensing function that allows you to lock your blended ice cream tub onto the side of the blender and extrude the ice cream almost the way you would in a soft serve machine (almost—we’ll get into the specifics later).

First impressions: Unboxing, size and counter appeal

Let’s get this out of the way: the Ninja CREAMi Swirl is big. Very big. It’s almost 30 percent wider than the original model to make space for the soft-serve dispenser and is too tall to fit under most wall cabinets. Whether considering an original CREAMi or the Swirl version, you’ll want to keep this in mind if you’re hoping this appliance will take up permanent countertop space—and double-check that it can fit in a cupboard, if not. We kept ours on the kitchen table for a few weeks, which wasn’t ideal; in a small kitchen, it may need to go into storage in the off-season.

How we tested it

In the weeks leading up to the holiday baking frenzy last winter, I made space on my kitchen counter for the CREAMi Swirl to try out a few recipes: a coconut milk-based sorbet, a chocolate protein-shake ice cream, a straight-forward vanilla ice cream made with heavy cream and eggs, and a fruit-cocktail invention my eldest son made up on the fly after seeing how much fun we were having with the first two recipes.

Does the Swirl actually work?

The coconut milk sorbet and protein shake ice cream were incredibly straightforward. I mixed the ingredients together thoroughly in a bowl (coconut milk, sugar, salt and vanilla bean paste for the former and chocolate protein powder, milk and Greek yogurt for the latter), poured it into one of the blending tubs, snapped on a lid and popped it into the freezer until frozen solid—about 12 hours. Afterwards, I removed the storage lid, snapped on the blending lid (a black case with a blunt blade you need to lock into place), and placed it into the CREAMi.

Photo, courtesy SharkNinja.

From here, it was just button work: choosing my desired blending function, letting the CREAMi rip for two minutes, then checking the tub to see how smoothly the base had blended. In both cases, I needed to run through the base twice to get the consistency I wanted. Time-wise, this isn’t a bad tradeoff; it takes about 20 minutes of mixing to get an ice cream consistency in a traditional churn model.

Texture-wise, I was more impressed with the results in the coconut ice cream than the protein shake, which still ended up a bit gritty after multiple blends. Considering the coconut base had been frozen into a solid block, and there was a lot of water content in it, I was expecting a watery ice cream; the end result was smooth and very creamy. It was also plenty of fun—both for my two young kids and me—to then take the blended tub and run it through the soft-serve dispenser into ice cream cones. The technique required to get a swirly result takes time, as the dispensing lever that controls the speed is very sensitive to pressure, but it’s otherwise simple and intuitive to use.

Where the CREAMi really impressed me was our last taste test. After a couple of experiments, my eldest son was keen to make up an ice cream recipe of his own, an on-the-fly cocktail of maraschino cherries, orange juice, pomegranate syrup and sliced oranges—basically a frozen Shirley Temple. I was worried that the high water content in this mix would make the frozen base unblendable, but the CREAMi handily blitzed through this, too. (The result was something closer to a granita.)

Texture, taste and overall results

So, how does the CREAMi Swirl soft serve ice cream maker stack up to my beloved Cuisinart? This machine’s ability to turn a wider variety of ice cream bases into something resembling a frozen dessert is truly impressive and something outside the scope of a traditional churn model. This is an attractive feature, especially for occasional ice cream hobbyists who don’t want to go through the trouble of making a custard-style ice cream base or people who would rather not work with dairy: you can get a nice result with this machine without a ton of fat content.

What it’s like to use (and clean) the CREAMi Swirl, day to day

In terms of functionality, this is an easy-to-use appliance—but that doesn’t necessarily translate to an everyday one. There are quite a few parts involved: an inner freezing tub, an outer tub that locks into the machine, a storage lid, a blending lid and the components involved in the soft serve dispenser. While they’re all dishwasher safe and easy to clean, they’re also a lot to keep track of.

Another point of contention is something that’s been brought up in multiple reviews about both the original CREAMi and the updated Swirl: it’s noisy! I truly was not prepared for how loud this machine is when it blends. It’s louder than my Vitamix, louder than my 20-year-old furnace, louder than my five-year-old in the middle of a tantrum. We were still living in a stacked condo at the time of testing, and at one point our neighbours actually knocked on the wall when we blended our ice cream the second time. While the Swirl is meant to be quieter than the original model, you’ll still want to cover your ears.

Who the CREAMi Swirl is great for and who can skip it

After this experiment, I think I understand CREAMi’s viral popularity a little better. It’s tremendously easy to use and allows for such a wide margin of error that you don’t need a specific recipe to end up with a great result. Ice cream has typically been considered a barrier recipe for a lot of beginner home cooks: either the equipment involved or the assumption that you need to make a proper custard to get a creamy result turns a lot of people off the prospect of making one.

CREAMi’s ability to blend through most pre-frozen bases, along with its texture-specific presets, not only gets around this limitation but also gives users the freedom to riff, swap ingredients as needed and customize. There are, however, a couple of things this machine can’t do. Traditional churning and industrial-grade soft serve machines get their soft, airy result in mechanically specific ways that a blender can’t reproduce. I think if you’re looking for a professional, dairy-based result, you need to churn.

(For the truly A-gamers in the ice cream machine world, the need to pre-freeze either the base or the churning bucket in a transitional churning model might also be a turnoff. While it’s pricier, if you fit into this category, I’d suggest a compressor-style model of ice cream machine, which uses a cooling mechanism to freeze your liquid base while churning, no pre-freeze required.)

Is the Ninja CREAMi Swirl worth it?

I will admit, I was far more impressed with the CREAMi Swirl than I was initially expecting. It’s versatile, easy to use, and makes it very difficult to make a mistake. Once I put it into storage to get ready for the holiday baking season, however, I didn’t find myself reaching for it very often—largely due to its size and noise. Once rhubarb season rolls around this spring, we’ll see which model I reach for: the CREAMi or my Cuisinart.

Ninja CREAMi Swirl Ice Cream and Soft Serve Maker, $450