Verdict

Pros

• Tasty ice cream
• Doubles as wine cooler

Cons

• Must pre-freeze bowl
• Bowl tall, hard to fit in freezer
• Ice cream soft

What is the Magimix Le Glacier?

The Magimix Le Glacier is a compact ice cream maker. The sort where you have to pre-freeze the bowl (read: the entire body of the machine) overnight. We tested the one that makes 1.5 litres of ice cream, but a smaller 1.1 litre version is available for £10 less.

The Magimix’s body is tall, so it’s hard to fit in a cramped freezer drawer. And its ice cream is runny – you need to freeze it afterwards to get it firm enough to serve. It’s not a bad machine, but there are better.

Magimix Le Glacier – Design and Features

The Magimix is an unexceptional-looking ice cream maker in the white finish we tested. It’s also available in a rather bling shiny chrome finish.

It’s tall, which means it can be hard fitting the bowl in the freezer – a pain because if you freeze the bowl on its side it cools the ice cream mix unevenly.

On the plus side, the height means it doubles well as a wine cooler or ice bucket. This is a clever idea we hadn’t thought of before and a good incentive to keep the bowl in the freezer (if you have enough space) so it’s always on standby for wine chilling, ice bucketing and ice cream making duties.

The instructions say that it takes 20-30 minutes’ churning to make a batch of ice cream and that you can return the bowl to the freezer for 5-7 hours and it’s ready to go again.

The instructions also contain more than 30 recipes for ice creams, sorbets, even sauces. These include everything from foodie recipes to ones that are super simple for kids.

Magimix Le Glacier – What’s it like to use?

Setting up the Magimix was fine, apart from the business of shoehorning its bowl in and out of a cramped under-counter freezer.

The see-through front half of the lid has a large hole that makes it easy to pour in your ice cream mix and even add sweets, nuts and other ingredients.

The machine isn’t too noisy. But its results were runny – after 30 minutes it was clear that the mix wasn’t getting any thicker, so we stopped the machine.

The results were too runny to serve as a dessert – much of the mix could be poured out of the bowl rather than scooped.

After freezing it overnight, the ice cream was dark and dense, with a slightly granular texture, but it was very tasty.

Should I buy the Magimix Le Glacier?

Probably not. It’s ok, but it’s pricey. For not much more than half the money you can buy the Swan Come Dine With Me Ice Cream & Gelato Maker which is much, much better. Or for healthy frozen desserts look at the Judge Fro Fru.

Alternatively, if you want the best ice cream, consider the Cuisinart Gelato & Ice Cream Professional or Sage Smart Scoop that don’t require pre-freezing.

Verdict

The Magimix doubles as a wine cooler, but shop around for a better machine and you can buy a bottle of bubbly with the savings.

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