Product Review: DIY Blizzard Maker

Son got this Dairy Queen® Blizzard Maker for Christmas (yes, it was that long ago!) and I was kinda' perplexed as to why he wanted one, when we have a Cuisinart Professional Ice Cream Maker at home.

Needless to say, it kinda' gathered dust in his closet until I dug it out and bought the necessary ingredients to make ice cream with it. We were so excited - we were even thinking of turning the ice cream upside down before serving to see if all Blizzards work that way.

All for naught. Well ok, maybe a little.

First, the Blizzard Maker was defective - there were two parts that were supposed to lock together, but they didn't, causing a leak. And of course, this makes it impossible to churn custard anything in the contraption.

I didn't want to waste our efforts (and the ingredients) so I decided to salvage it by putting it in our ice cream maker to churn. Which posed another problem. Since the ice cream base was just half & half milk and the included powder mix, it was very thin and took 4x longer to churn. But still, I didn't want to disappoint son, so instead of the supposedly 15 minutes it would take to hand crank the ice cream base in the Blizzard Maker (don't ask me how!), it took an hour to make it in the professional ice cream maker.

Cuisinart to the rescue!

The Blizzard Maker came with tiny DQ cups and spoons, flavor packets and pop rocks. In fairness to the product, it did taste a bit like the Blizzard you buy in stores (though the texture is very different). However, the "pop rock" is nothing more than a mix of colored sugar and small pieces of hard candy. Nothing popping at all. Duds.

Churn, baby churn!

So we got creative and put shaved chocolate in our ice cream. It actually improved the experience, if not the taste. 

Chocolate shavings

I emailed Spin Master (the manufacturer of this Blizzard Maker) and they told me they would gladly replace it if I would: a.) pay for shipping, and b.) send in the product and the receipt. Hmmmmm..... it was approximately 8 months ago, so who knows where the receipt is?!?! Not to mention, this was a Christmas present, and if it didn't come with a gift receipt, I wouldn't ask for one.

Moral of the story: if you are craving for a DQ Blizzard, just run to the nearest store and get some. Would have saved us a lot of trouble. 

The finished product