Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Perhaps the only way to make real soft-serve at home
- Endless flexibility and customization options
Cons
- Deafeningly loud
- Substantial learning curve
- Dominates the countertop
- Significant cleanup required
Our Verdict
The Ninja Swirl makes credible soft serve, though results will vary depending on the recipe you use. Fortunately the Swirl’s flexibility lets you turn almost anything into a frozen dessert, and dedicated fans of frozen goodies could make a new recipe every day for a year without repeating one. Alas, it’s not the smallest kitchen gadget, and cleanup is a pain – but it’s the insane noise level that may be the dealbreaker.
Price When Reviewed
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Best Prices Today: Ninja Swirl by Creami
$349.99
How big a social media darling was the original Ninja Creami ice cream maker? Its Facebook community has over 600,000 members and its TikTok channel has more than 90 million views to date. All of which is to say that people really, really love ice cream.
But what’s better than a scoop of ice cream? Soft serve ice cream, amirite? Enter the awkwardly named Ninja Swirl by Creami, a device which takes the original Creami and expands on it by adding a soft-serve dispenser that works almost like something you’d find in a fro-yo shop.
It’s a delightfully fun (and delicious) product, but as with the original Creami, your results will necessarily vary based on the recipes and raw ingredients you choose.
Design and Build
- Large appliance (15.16 x 10.04 x 17.52in)
- Heavy too (21lbs/9.5kg)
Ninja’s original Creami has the rough appearance of a coffee maker or a food processor, but the Swirl is quite a different beast.
Effectively, the Swirl is designed with a standard Creami system on the right and a new soft serve-dispensing component on the left, roughly doubling the footprint of the device. A lever has also been added to the right of the device, used to control the soft serve dispensing process.
Ninja
Consuming 8 x 13in of counter space (and a cabinet-friendly 17.5in high), the Swirl weighs a significant 21lbs (9.5kg). While an ice cream maker probably isn’t something most consumers will want on their countertop 24/7, moving it around isn’t easy – nor is finding storage space for it.
The design of the product doesn’t stray far from the classic Ninja aesthetic, which is all gray, black, and silver – decidedly space-age and not at all visually appealing. It’s perhaps Ninja’s way of telling you that you’re supposed to keep your eyes on the finished product instead: your homemade ice cream.
Performance and Features
- Does everything that the original Creami does
- Makes frozen yogurt, sorbet, frozen fruit whips and more
- Noisy in operation
As with Creami 1.0, a lot of the work that goes into making ice cream with the Swirl has nothing to do with the device and happens well before you even plug it in. Namely, you first have to make something that can be frozen and turned into ice cream.
Ninja provides a book of recipes ranging from classic soft serve to frozen yogurt to sorbet and more, boasting 13 different operating modes available and nearly infinite variations within each of those.
You can dispense into a bowl or a cone, or, why not, directly into your mouth
Six of these modes are new to the Swirl, adding to the seven already available on the Creami. (All of the scoop-style ice cream options from the Creami still work here; you skip the soft serve dispenser when you make them.)
The preparation process hasn’t really changed: Choose a recipe, mix up your ingredients, and freeze the concoction in a special container that Ninja calls a Swirl Pint.
Christopher Null / Foundry
Recipes can be complex and require exotic ingredients like chai tea concentrate, or they can be utterly simple and require no prep at all. Regular yogurt, canned fruit, and even chocolate milk can all be dumped directly into a Swirl Pint and turned into frozen treats of varying levels of deliciousness.
First you mix, then you wait: The Swirl Pint has to spend 24 grueling hours in the freezer before it’s ready for processing, and then the fun begins.
For soft serve, Swirl is a two-part process. First the Swirl Pint goes into a bowl with a special lid that contains a spinning blade. Punch your chosen mode into the control panel and it goes to town, dropping the blade directly into the Swirl Pint and turning the rock-hard block into a whipped semi-solid.
Ninja is famous for the extreme volume of its devices, and the Swirl is no exception during processing. For about 5 minutes – running time varies depending on the mode – the noise is literally deafening. I measured (unscientifically) its volume at 91 decibels a few inches away from the whirling blade. (Long-term exposure to noise above 85 dBA can cause hearing loss.)
By day three of testing, I simply left the room while ice cream was processing. It’s worth noting that Ninja says this is its quietest Creami device produced to date.
There’s a learning curve to using the Swirl, as various buttons have to be pressed and switches have to be flipped
Scoop ice cream is finished at this point, but soft serve requires you to remove the Swirl Pint from the bowl and install a second special lid on top of the Pint. The Swirl Pint is then attached horizontally to the dispensing side of the Swirl machine.
Pull the handle on the right and a portion of the lid is pushed forward into the Swirl Pint like a hydraulic press and out the ice cream comes, just like in the movies, via a nozzle that’s built directly into the Swirl Pint. You can dispense into a bowl or a cone, or, why not, directly into your mouth.
Christopher Null
After this it’s time for cleanup, and there’s plenty of it. The Swirl Pints and both lids need to be disassembled and cleaned, and while this is tedious it isn’t difficult save for the struggle required to get the various rubber gaskets off – and later put back in the right place. All parts are top-rack dishwasher safe, but that of course means even more waiting time until you can prepare your next pint.
The description makes it sound easy, but there’s a learning curve to using the Swirl, as various buttons have to be pressed and switches have to be flipped in just the right order or else you’ll encounter problems – sometimes significant ones.
I forgot to flip open the base of the Swirl Pint on one run, which caused ice cream to squeeze out the backside of the Pint, making a huge mess on the machine.
Price and Availability
In the US, the Ninja Swirl by Creami costs $349.99 and is available online from Ninja and Amazon. It has not yet launched in the UK.
It’s an expensive buy, without a doubt, and you’ll need to weigh up how much the soft serve capability is worth to you. The original Creami, and the Creami Deluxe, are more budget-friendly – and will take up much less counter space.
Should you buy the Ninja Swirl by Creami?
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding – or the custard, at least: How do Ninja Swirl concoctions taste?
As you probably guessed, it depends on the recipe: My favorite item to date was a chocolate banana “fruit whip” that had a nice, thick consistency and a rich flavor – and with no added sugar. In keeping with the machine’s raison d’être, standard soft serve was what I made the most, and while I quite enjoyed the taste, it never quite had the consistency you get from the product of a true soft serve machine, and I found that it often melted before I got to the bottom of a bowl.
Classic frozen yogurt and fruit sorbets taste authentic, though I’d be remiss without suggesting that fans of frozen fruit whips should consider the smaller and much more affordable Yonanas device instead. That said, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface on what you can do with the many modes on the device.
At $349.99, the Ninja Swirl is pricey for what amounts to a noisy novelty that I would only occasionally use – and struggle to find room for in my already crowded kitchen, but if you are a true soft serve fan, none of that may matter.
Making your own ice cream at home is about as much fun as you can have in the kitchen, and “ice cream time” became a fun ritual for me and my wife each afternoon while I was testing the Swirl.
While I may only break it out for special occasions, it’s definitely something I’ll at least keep stashed in the garage for when that soft serve mood happens to strike. Which it will.
If you want to expand your Ninja range, take a look at our round-up of the best Ninja air fryers and indoor and outdoor countertop cookers.
