Ninja Swirl Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:05] it. My Ninja machine took a dump. All right, so I have been a huge fan of the Ninja Creamy ever since it came out a few years ago. I have used it to make hundreds of delicious frozen

[00:17] desserts, and I can confidently say that it has changed my culinary life for the hit the market just a few months ago, let's just say I got a little excited. This is the Ninja Swirl, and it has the same creamy technology built in, plus

[00:32] the additional ability to make softer syrup. So, I ordered one up. I've never along on this journey with me. And I've got five completely different frozen desserts that I'll be using to test this

[00:44] machine out to really see if it's worth the upgrade. But first, I just want to briefly go over the engineering of this machine. And this video is not sponsored, but I'm just a huge fan of Ninja's ability and risktaking in this

[00:57] space. They continuously just take big swings with these home appliances that ultimately give home cooks the ability to do things that they never could in the kitchen, like make actual soft serve ice cream. So, when you look at this

[01:10] machine, it's pretty much split into two. You have on the left side basically the Ninja Cream. the same exact technology, slightly updated and more refined design, which I do appreciate from the last model. And then they've

[01:23] expanded the machine by almost double, maybe a third to incorporate the actual soft serve extruder. Now, I will mention right up front that the actual container where the frozen dessert goes in. This is a completely new design, which means

[01:36] that the old containers for the Ninja Creamy and Ninja Creamy Deluxe are completely obsolete if you upgrade to this thing, which is a bit of a bummer. Like I bought more of these because I made a lot of frozen dessert and now if

[01:48] I keep this machine, these don't carry over. But that's just the move that Ninja had to make in order to make this process work. And speaking of the process, it starts off exactly the same as the creamy. You make a mixture in one

[02:00] overnight. And then you place on the blending lid, which has that Ninja Blade, which then blends your frozen mixture into ice cream or fro yo or sorbet or whatever you want. But now you have two options for blending. One is

[02:13] The same exact thing that you would get out of the original Ninja Creamy. Or you for soft serve, which then signals to the machine to blend up your frozen dessert in a specific way that makes it

[02:26] better for softs serve dispensing. And then once it's blended, you pop off the blending lid and pop on this new special lid for dispensing the soft serve, which lets you lock it right into place in the soft serve dispensing area. Then the

[02:39] bottom of the plastic container has a lock and unlock function. And when you unlock it, the soft serve now has the ability to flow out of this little star- pull the handle on the side of the machine, which pushes the suction cup

[02:52] that's built into the actual lid, slowly extruding the soft serve into your cup suction cup goes back and you can release the container to be frozen again or washed out if it's finished. And this machine retails for around $350 US,

[03:07] which is a $100 upgrade from the Ninja Creamy Deluxe, which is what I have, and $150 upgrade from the original Ninja Creamy. So, the big question that I'm is this machine worth it? It's almost double the size. The old containers are

[03:21] obsolete. They don't carry over. So, this swirl soft serve ability better be about to test with five different recipes. And for the first one, I had to go with just a straight up fro yo. And I'm keeping it really simple with three

[03:35] ingredients. All I did was dump in some plain Greek yogurt to the container. Just around two cups. And of course, you can sweeten this however you want. Since using maple syrup, which mixes in really nicely. And I'm adding in just around

[03:48] 1/4 cup. I'll hit it with just a little salt to enhance the flavors. And then blueberries. And I'll actually let the creamy blades take care of blending this freezer overnight. And the next day it was ready for some saucing. I've got

[04:02] Carly in to assist me on our our first run right now. This right here is the fro yo. Totally frozen. Blueberries are whole in there. So we put that in here. Pop this lid on. And it's first going to go through just the regular creamy side.

[04:18] hit Actually, we're going to do frozen yogurt. Yeah. 5 minutes. don't always nail it on the first spin. Sometimes you need a respin. But that

[04:32] Sometimes you need a respin. But that looks perfect to me. Yeah. Okay. So, now we take this top. This is some crazy engineering from Ninja. Put that on somehow. Right now, I think we have to open. See, it says close and open here.

[04:47] We have to open it. Ooh. So, now that releases the flow. And then take this. That blue lines up here. Oh, I see why there's a drip tray already. We pop that in. Now, the thing I'm interested most in is a classic soft serve machine.

[05:03] certain temperature. This is just sitting here and it's slowly getting warmer. So, I'm interested in how long it's going to be able to give me a clean soft serve without melting. You'll see that sort of suction cup pump thing

[05:17] starting to push the Fro Yo through, I believe. Yep. See that? That is so cool. Starting to pump. Okay. This is so nerve-wracking. Wo. nerve-wracking. Wo. Oh boy. Not the best swirl. Wo. That

[05:32] will be for Carly. What do you think now, Carly? Looks pretty good. I'm impressed. You were very skeptical. Yes. Okay. I want to see if I can get a better I don't know how you do. Oh, don't you like push

[05:44] know how you do. Oh, don't you like push like that? Yeah. Oh, second time, baby. Blueberry fro yo. I'll give you the nice one. It's so cute. Yep. Mine's not so great. Here we go. M m. So good. Yeah.

[06:02] [Laughter] Texture. I hope you leave this in the studio so we can use it. This is a studio machine. It is great. So good. Texture is amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. First spin straight out of this thing.

[06:15] It's perfect. Now, this is obviously melting. So, I want to test how long it's got to be kind of a quick cuz I'm already done with that. If like somehow Ninja could figure out how to

[06:29] refrigerate this area, that would be insane. [ __ ] push and it's still still good. Yeah. The other thing is, oh my god, it's really kind of just single double serving. Like if we made a huge ice cream cone, it's probably two or

[06:44] three ice cream cones cups of ice cream. My kids are going to lose their with this. It's so good. Such a treat. I'll give Cooper. I was going to say, can I try to extrude it? Yeah. Do you have experience? Extruding experience? No.

[06:57] Okay. Of all my working experience, I've never I've never worked in ice with ice cream. It's a nice feeling, don't you think? Coming out. Oh, you're going for the spin. Yeah, I'm going for the spin. Oh, you're going for it. Oh god. All

[07:10] give that little ice cream for Cooper. It's still very much holding its like you would get it from an ice cream shop. And I am most impressed about that

[07:22] because I didn't know if it's going to come out liquidy or whatnot. So, I'm much I mean, we've got maybe more ice cream. I'm also curious to see how, you you're making. I'm curious. That's why we're testing five total. So, next up, I

[07:38] a banana base. And I made the measurements for this one as simple as possible. Two ripe bananas go in, followed by 1/4 cup of coconut powder, 1/4 cup of coconut milk, 1/4 cup of almond milk, and 1/4 cup of maple syrup.

[07:52] the flavors. And I'm pre-blending this one up to make sure I really incorporate that cocoa powder nice and smooth. And I fine without it, but it does add a nice little touch to round out the flavors.

[08:05] And this base was tasting very nice, so I've got high hopes for the swirling. I've got high hopes for the swirling. So, chocolate going in. Would we consider this ice cream or light ice cream? I would say it's light ice cream.

[08:18] Yeah, cuz it's banana. I wouldn't say it's quite the creamy fit. Creamy fit is like the protein sh going to be like the peanut butter one. Soft serve light ice

[08:33] out. Might have let that one sit at room temperature a little too long. I don't love the look of it, but Oh, should be fine. A little more loose than I wanted, but we'll try it. All right. Put this blue top on. Okay. And then pop this in

[08:50] here. And then we will open it. Boom. Here we go. All right. It's pushing it. Here we go. All right. It's pushing it. Extruding. And here she bit more loose. We're just going to hit it with some coconut. Oh, yeah. Yum.

[09:05] Yum. Yum. Yum. Definitely much softer looking. Yeah. Mhm. M much softer. Much softer. Like the texture isn't nearly as good. No, it needs to be firmer. I probably need to let it come right out of the freezer. I let that sit for way

[09:20] too long. It like tempered before you spread it. Yeah, that's my That's my I mean, it's delicious, but this one to me tastes and feels like a smoothie. Yeah, you don't really get the soft serve. That tasted like fro yo. Yeah, you just

[09:32] That's why we're testing all of these today. But it is chocolate delicious banana ice cream. Next up, I wanted to try out a simple fruit whip. And I'm just using two ingredients. So, I had some frozen peaches that I defrosted.

[09:46] This summer, we cooked down some fresh peaches with a bunch of sugar. So, the sweetener is already built in. You could use a can of peaches and you get the coconut cream. And I'm really just focusing on the solid cream here so I

[10:00] cream effect. I'll blend that up with my immersion blender. And this was already looking pretty creamy and tasting great. So I had high

[10:21] peaches and cream with corn flakes. Nice. Yeah, it's holding its shape. That's one of the most impressive parts is the texture. I thought just coming out of the machine since it's not refrigerated in there, it would melt,

[10:34] but like that is real fro yo coming out. All right. M. That one's good. Wow. That one's good. It's so smooth. Yeah. I think we coconut would Well, coconut would have been good. Coconut's in there. I think

[10:47] the sweetness is fine. It could use something. You said tartness or or vanilla or like a little something extra. It tastes a little bit like canned peaches, you know, like too much like canned peaches, but the texture is

[11:01] perfect. So, that's easy to adjust. really good with fresh peaches, with coconut cream, and then fresh peaches. The texture on that. I mean, just look at the top of the creamy machine. Yeah. It's like This is soft serve texture to

[11:13] me. I love it. Everyone I get so excited to try. We're moving on. So, something I've seen in the creamy community is a lot of people make these high protein They have a bunch of different recipes in their booklet and they actually have

[11:27] right here a creamy fit button, which I guess is for these more fitbased frozen and see what it's all about. I'm going to be making my own peanut butter protein ice cream with 1 cup of milk, 3/4 cups of almond milk, 1/4 cup of

[11:40] peanut butter powder, 1/4 cup of coconut sugar, and just a little bit of salt. flavor was like first, which was tasting recipes in the book actually use these instant pudding packets. I'm not really

[11:53] into that because I just want the actual thickener. I don't want a bunch of additional flavorings. So, I was looking up different ways to thicken these frozen desserts, and guar gum came up as a great option, which I've never used

[12:05] experiment. And guar gum comes from the seed of the guar plant, which is a bean addition to this. And it will thicken both a hot and a cold mixture. So, I just started dumping some in until it got a little thick. But, I made a big

[12:21] oopsie. It turns out that guar gum just continues to thicken over time. So, what I thought was the perfect consistency at this point just kept getting thicker. And I think in total, I added like a/4 cup of this stuff. So, when I sent it

[12:33] through the actual machine, it basically was like dough at that point. And I nearly broke this new Ninja Swirl. It barely could handle it. And then when I actually sent it through the extruder, it just said, "No, thank

[12:47] you. Can't even handle it." There was zero chance it was being extruded. So, I had to dump that one and start over. And I did the same exact recipe cuz it tasted good with just a/4 teaspoon of the guaram.

[13:18] I didn't unlock this and it just built up. I'm like, why is it not coming out? So, this one is too soft. Like, right off. I don't know why. Maybe a little more guaram. Maybe Maybe it didn't need the creamy fit. Maybe it needed like

[13:31] light ice cream and it over blended. I have a feeling it's going to be good, but texturally I It's better than the banana one though. More solid. It looks exactly like a Wendy's Frosty. Like same texture. Mhm. Mhm. Too soft, but

[13:48] delicious. So good. So tasty. Yeah. Recipe spot on. texturally. Yeah, it's like icy like a smoothie. Yeah. So, that's interesting. Maybe some more guar too much and this is not enough. Just like a little bit more though. I don't

[14:02] is nice cuz I really don't like that. But it's not it's not thick enough. This is so good though. Yeah. If we can get the texture right on that. Moving on to just ice cream, soft serve ice cream, which I'm probably the most interested

[14:15] in. Oh no. So for this last one, I wanted to try out just a standard custard ice cream base to see what a nice soft serve ice cream was like in this machine. So to a pot, I added two cups of heavy cream, 1 cup of almond

[14:27] lighten things up a little bit. Half a cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract, 1/4 teaspoon of some salt. Then to give it some additional flavoring, I'm just grating in some fresh cinnamon here, which is about a/4 teaspoon in

[14:40] total. And I warmed this mixture up to around 150° F. And then I've got six egg yolks because the chickens are back in action and laying a ton of eggs. And I'm tempering in that hot cream. Just a little at a time so I don't scramble the

[14:53] yolks. And then once that has warmed up and tempered, I'm going to add everything back to my pot and just slowly bring it up to temperature, mixing it the entire time for around 10 to 15 minutes until it hits around 175

[15:06] to 180° F, which is when you're going to start to see it thicken up very nicely. Then that got poured into my creamy. It went into the freezer overnight and then the next day it was ready for some soft. Regular ice

[15:25] cream. Oh, promising. Look at that texture. Oh Wo. Would you say this is the most excited you've been out of the five? The

[15:37] most exciting for last? Yeah. It's firm and it looks like soft serve. Yes. from the frosty truck or whatever. All right. Ready? Wow. Wow. Is it too luxurious for soft serve? I feel like soft serve is almost

[15:53] lighter. Like this is a real ice cream base. A custard. When I think of soft serve, I'm thinking Carvell, which is custard. So, this to me is soft serve because it's eggy. It's custardy. It's so smooth. It tastes like Cinnamon Toast

[16:08] know. It's nice to have like all alternative dairy healthier options, but this is just hands down the absolutely the best one. It's so good. The fro yo and this are the winners, which are like real soft serve, you know, every time we

[16:23] tried to do something different. Yeah, it was like it's good, but Yeah. All right. So, what are your overall feelings? I was skeptical cuz it's a one use tool, but it's super fun. Kind of two uses. You can make regular ice cream

[16:36] and soft serve. Um, but it's defin I mean this is definitely this is super fun. I like it for me. Like in my tiny tiny kitchen, I would never buy this probably. Um, it's a big it's a big It's a big It's a very big machines, but if

[16:51] you have space, it's fun. It's a little annoying that the old creamy cups are obsolete. If you're starting from scratch, like going straight to this, having this option, if you have the space is a no-brainer. And it's only,

[17:03] you know, the price difference from the creamy to this. It's say h 100red bucks. But I think that's Yeah. I mean, if if you can have this, there's no reason to just get the creamy one for me. The memories and culinary experiences having

[17:17] young kids. This is like I think life-changing. I always had the dream of life-changing. I always had the dream of opening a soft serve healthier frozen dessert shop. And that's never going to happen. Yeah. But now you can pretend. I

[17:31] can at least know what it would taste like. And we got to eat a lot of sugar. breakfast. A lot of lot of sugar for breakfast.