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Updated July 2026
The best gift we received this past holiday season—by far—is the Tern Craft Ice Cream Maker. Luscious ice cream, frozen yogurt, or sorbet is ready in just five minutes (with the bowl kept in the freezer and the base mix previously chilled).
It’s our Top Pick Of The Week (and perhaps every week forever!).
Watch it making ice cream here:
There’s more in a minute about this remarkable little machine, but we want to point out some goodies you can find elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The year’s 50+ ice cream holidays.
> The different types of frozen desserts: a photo glossary.
> The history of ice cream.
> The history of the ice cream maker.
TERN: THE BEST SMALL ICE CREAM MAKER WE’VE TRIED
We’ve been making ice cream at home since childhood. Our mother had one of the hand-cranked White Mountain ice cream makers (photo #11), which set a quart-size cylinder of ice cream base into an old-fashioned wood bucket of rock salt. Adding water to the bucket created the slurry that froze the ice cream.
But it required the upper arm strength to turn the crank for 30 to 45 minutes. (And we’re always surprised that despite creating electric versions decades ago, the hand-cranked versions are still sold!)
In the 1970s, electric ice cream makers for home use appeared. No more upper arm workout, and it used regular ice cubes instead of the rock salt slurry (photo #12).
Cuisinart introduced its first electric home ice cream maker in 1978. We got one as a birthday gift, and happily created flavors that could not be purchased in stores (banana chocolate chip [a decade before Chunky Monkey!], Grand Marnier, malted milk ball, vanilla double malt, and peach [a favorite flavor we could enjoy all year round, using frozen peaches]).
But the real advance was the unit that didn’t require ice. In 1984, the Donvier ice cream maker was introduced to the U.S. from Japan. It was the first unit to use frozen gel in a double-walled canister to chill the ice cream, instead of ice and water.
You’d freeze the metal cylinder overnight in your freezer, then pour in the ice cream mixture and manually turn the handle intermittently for 15–30 minutes. Yes, it was manual—but not painfully so.
Then came a parade of small ice cream makers with pre-frozen cylinders that had electricity! We tried a few of them but never found the perfect one. Our complaint generally was that they didn’t freeze the ice cream firmly enough to enjoy it right out of the churn. We had to place the ice cream in the freezer to harden.
So when we opened the box and pulled out the Tern, it was with both anticipation but also and concern. But Tern is a champion: firm ice cream in an amazingly swift five minutes. And at just 8″ x 10″ x 12″, it’s a space saver as well.
That’s it in a nutshell. For “beyond the nutshell,” keep scrolling.
And for the story of the weirdest ice cream maker we’ve ever tried, see the †footnote below.
IS THE TERN FOR YOU?
If you like to cook, then YES! If you’d like artisan alternatives beyond what you can buy at the grocer’s, then YES! If you want your ice cream ready in 5 minutes (with planning ahead to chill the mix and the bowl), then YES! If you don’t need to produce large quantities, then YES!
The Tern Craft Ice Cream Maker succeeds brilliantly at what it sets out to do: produce small batches of genuinely premium ice cream quickly, using an artisan-style process.
It makes a pint at a time, so it’s not for a crowd—but it’s perfect if you want ice cream for two.
At just under one hundred twenty dollars, it’s an investment, but one that pays dividends of delight.
While the company doesn’t make any “savings” claims, we’ve found that the cost of ingredients is far less than the $7-$10 that better pints of ice cream cost in our area.
GET YOUR TERN
> Head to TernIceCream.com.
MORE TO KNOW
It’s So Fast!
In a world of automatic ice cream machines that churn away for 25 to 40 minutes, the Tern Craft Ice Cream Maker promises something different: ready-to-eat, artisan-quality ice cream in five minutes. And it delivers!
The Simple Process
The five-minute churning time is accurate for the actual ice cream making, but this doesn’t include preparation time for your base mixture or the overnight freezing requirement for the bowl. If you decide at eight in the evening that you want ice cream, the Tern won’t help you unless you’ve kept the bowl in the freezer.
The company recommends leaving it there permanently, which is reasonable if you have a small amount of freezer space to spare.
For simple, no-cook vanilla ice cream recipes, it takes less than 60 seconds to whisk together the cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla. If you’re making a custard base with egg yolks, it needs to be whisked for 5 minutes in a saucepan.
Whatever the recipe, it needs two hours of chilling. However, this is true with any automatic ice cream maker.
You keep the freezer bowl in the freezer overnight (we leave ours there permanently) which completely freezes its internal fluid.
When you’re ready to make ice cream, attach the bowl to the base, pour in the prepared mixture, and use the paddle to scrape and churn for about five minutes (photos #2, #3, and #4).
The machine spins the bowl while you hold the paddle, scraping down the bowl as needed.
The task is pretty effortless, and it’s enjoyable to watch the frozen treat come together. Numerous electric ice cream makers have you push a button and walk away, but the five minutes of interactive “work” with the paddle is fun.
The only drawback is that it makes a pint at a time, not a quart (the same is true with other smaller machines). For two people, that’s enough; for a larger family, not.
However, you can purchase an extra bowl and be ready to make the next pint as soon as the first bowl is done spinning.
And if you work quickly, you can sometimes get a second batch out of the same bowl before it needs to return to the freezer.
Either way, you have means to make a quart.
The Result: Simply Wonderful Ice Cream!
The quality of its finished product is truly wonderful. Using only the recipes provided by the manufacturer, we enjoyed bowl after bowl of ice cream, custard (i.e., Philadelphia stye, with egg yolks), gelato, and sorbet.
The ice cream comes out firm and scoopable immediately, ready for a bowl or cone—unlike other home machines where the mixture resembles soft-serve and requires additional freezing time.
Non-dairy milks work equally well. In fact, if you’ve been less than thrilled with how your current machine makes plant-based ice cream, we can assure you the recipes we made with coconut cream and oat milk were just as impressive as cow-based.
Because the rapid freezing technology creates a superior texture regardless of fat content, you can reduce the amount of cream and egg yolks in recipes.
You can also use the sweetener of choice, including non-caloric options.
[11] Our mother hand-cranked our family’s ice cream (photo © The Nibble).
How Tern Came To Be
Tern was created by mechanical engineer Josh Stuckey after years of disappointment with home ice cream makers. They took too long to freeze batches, resulting in larger ice crystals and less smooth, less creamy ice cream.
After studying ice cream production books written for the industry, Stuckey realized that the difference was speed. Commercial artisan machines freeze ice cream rapidly, creating smaller ice crystals.
After almost two decades of testing, dozens of design integrations, and many hundreds of hours of making ice cream, he found the solution.
Rather than slowly churning the ingredients in a stationary bowl, the patented Tern machine rapidly spins a pre-frozen bowl while the user manually scrapes the freezing ingredients with a paddle.
This fast-freeze technology mimics what happens in professional gelato shops, dispersing the mix onto the extremely cold aluminum walls of the bowl where it freezes almost instantly.
Speed also enables recipes to churn out creamy, smooth frozen fare with less fat and sugar. Not that we’re touting ice cream as protein, but every little bit of savings helps.
For how the Tern got its name, see the *footnote below.
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