Ninja Swirl by Creami Adds Soft Serve to the Countertop Ice Cream Maker

The Ninja Creami made whipping up your own ice cream at home easier than ever, while its follow-up, the Creami Deluxe, offered even more versatility, letting you make practically any kind of frozen dessert your heart desires. Well, other than soft serve ice cream, which neither appliance has been able to concoct. That changes now with the Ninja Swirl by Creami.

The latest iteration of the outfit’s countertop ice cream maker, the device is noticeably bigger than its predecessors, looking almost like you tacked on a second device to the left side of either of the previous models. From what we can tell, that’s exactly what they did, giving it a secondary module that’s dedicated to cranking out soft serve. Is soft serve really worth all the extra countertop space it’s going to take up? Ninja clearly thinks so and they’re hoping a good chunk of folks feel the same way.

The Ninja Swirl by Creami gives you multiple options in the kind of frozen desserts it can produce, namely ice cream, frozen yogurt, fruit whip, frozen custard, lite ice cream, milk shake, sorbet, and gelato. Some of those options will further let you pick between traditional and soft serve, with the latter being available for ice cream, lite ice cream, fruit whip, frozen custard, frozen yogurt, and creamifit, with the latter being engineered specifically for low-calorie, high-protein frozen treats. Suffice to say, this new model is even more versatile than the Creami’s previous iterations.

There’s also a Re-Spin function that lets you further customize the ice cream’s texture to your liking, as well as a Mix-In option for throwing in additional ingredients on the fly. Sadly, it still doesn’t have a cooling mechanism, so you’ll still need to freeze your mix separately for 24 hours before using it with the machine.

The Ninja Swirl by Creami works much like the previous models. You freeze your ingredients in a pint for 24 hours, then put it on the integrated container on the lower right side for processing into ice cream, gelato, or whatever other dessert you want. Once done, you can simply take the pint out and eat it like regular ice cream. For soft serve, though, you take the finished pint and put it on the upper left slot, in which case it becomes a soft serve ice cream dispenser. To get your soft serve, simply pull down the large handle on the right side and it will start dispensing straight to your cone or cup. If you want to store any leftover ice cream for another time, you simply press the Retract button, remove the pint from the soft serve slot, and put it in the freezer for later.

Granted, the soft serve addition does complicate the machine a little bit, which can make it a bit confusing the first couple of times you crank out a cone or two. However, it sounds like it’s easy enough to get the hang of eventually. Plus, you get to enjoy soft serve any time you want at home, which makes this quite the special treat.

The Ninja Swirl by Creami is available now, priced at $349.99.