Soft-serve ice cream at home with the Ninja Creami Swirl – is it worth it?
24/6/2026
Translation: Veronica Bielawski
Video: Davide Arizzoli
Pictures: Davide Arizzoli
The Ninja Creami Swirl doesn’t just make regular ice cream and sorbet – it makes soft-serve too. A creamy treat that takes (too much) effort.
There it is again at my neighbourhood party: the soft-serve machine with three dispensing taps. Vanilla on the left, strawberry on the right, and both flavours swirled together in the middle. Around the stand, a crowd of happy (and smeared-with-ice-cream) little faces. And the occasional kid in distress, whose soft-serve flopped off a way-too-small cone and is now melting on the tarmac.
For me, soft-serve brings me back to my childhood: no summer was complete without that artificial vanilla sweetness on my tongue and a half-eaten waffle cone ending up in the bin because it’s gone all soggy and tastes like wet cardboard.
So of course I jumped on testing the Ninja Creami Swirl straight away in the hope of making soft-serve at home – and fulfilling my childhood dream of dispensing it into a cone myself. An emotional experience, as you’ll see in the video.
The latest summer trend?
I’ll start with the dry facts. Ninja certainly has a knack for spotting trends; the Creami has been one of the best-selling ice cream makers in our range for years. Last year, the Slushie – which makes iced drinks – was added to the lineup and has also become a bestseller.
This year, the Creami Swirl is set to become the summer trend. The manufacturer markets it as a 13-in-1 device: you can use it to make ice cream, frozen yoghurt, milkshakes, smoothies, sorbets and many other variations. It’s apparent that, at its core, the Creami Swirl is simply a Creami with soft-serve functions added on. It can make regular ice cream along with liquid versions.
On the left side, there’s a dispenser. On the right, a blender to create ice cream in your desired consistency. The Ninja Creami doesn’t actively cool down liquids the way a real ice cream machine does – you have to freeze your mixture first.
22 steps to soft-serve
Here’s my process: I use the base recipe from the included booklet, stirring together sugar, skimmed milk powder, cream, milk and vanilla extract. Then I puree fresh strawberries and fold them in. For other flavours, I use fruits, chocolate, matcha powder, lemon or lime juice, or vanilla instead.
I fill around 500 ml into each of the two containers included by Ninja. (If you want to make more than two flavours or more than a litre of ice cream at a time, you can buy additional containers from Ninja or from third-party manufacturers.) Then I put the container in the freezer for at least 24 hours.
If I were to eat the frozen mixture as-is, the consistency wouldn’t be right at all. It’s full of ice crystals. And that’s where the Ninja Creami Swirl finally comes into play – I use it to blend the hardened mixture thoroughly. That takes a few steps.
I unscrew a larger container from the Creami Swirl and place the container with the frozen ice cream mixture inside (lid off). I then click a four-blade knife into the lid of the larger container and screw it on. Next, I screw said container back into the machine. With two clicks of a button, I then select the soft-serve preparation mode.
For two minutes, the blade blitzes through the 15-centimetre-thick layer of ice, turning it into a creamy mixture. But the preset time often isn’t enough. If the soft-serve is too thick or the bottom part is still frozen, the dispenser doesn’t dispense anything. Unfortunately, the machine doesn’t check the consistency itself; it always blends for the same amount of time. My tip: run the blender for another two minutes.
Once the mixture is soft enough, I take the container out, screw on another lid and lock the whole thing into the dispensing tap. Using the handle, I dispense my strawberry soft-serve. From the moment I take the frozen mixture out of the freezer to the moment I can enjoy my soft-serve, it takes 22 small steps. I counted. The whole process takes 15 to 20 minutes, even without spending time consulting the instructions.
The best soft-serve
The effort pays off. The strawberry soft-serve is wonderfully creamy and melts in your mouth. It’s just like the soft-serve from my childhood memories: I can lick it, bite into it or slurp it – or some combination of all three. As far as I’m concerned: the Ninja Creami Swirl makes the best-textured soft-serve I’ve ever eaten.
It’s not just the texture that wins me over – the taste does too: it’s creamy, sweet and fruity. Wow. The included recipe book definitely wasn’t just a box-ticking exercise. On the contrary: I made soft-serve for a children’s birthday party, for my family and for the Galaxus office. The reactions were always positive – something like: «Ooh, that’s surprisingly good! Really good, in fact!» It tastes best eaten from a cone.
The ice cream cones from De Beukelaer are really good – they’re made from fine pastry. The waffle cups, on the other hand, are strongly reminiscent of those cardboard-like cones from childhood that even a chocolate coating can’t save. Not to mention they’re much smaller than expected – about the size of a shot glass.
The effort
Unfortunately, the process of making soft-serve is far too complicated. If you pictured just pouring in the mixture and boom – dispensing soft-serve – I’m sorry to disappoint. Especially at the start, I found myself consulting the instructions constantly. Which step comes next? Where does this lid go again?
The two-minute – or, realistically, four-minute – blending process is loud. I measured 90 decibels. It sounds like a train going right through your kitchen or living room. Loud enough to be a conversation-stopper.
Further weak points: you can only dispense one flavour at a time. If you want to switch containers, you have to wash the blending lid and the dispensing lid. In addition, you’re not supposed to refreeze ice cream that has partially thawed. Not because of the taste, but because liquid can easily freeze between the base of the container and the opening, which may partially or completely block the dispenser.
After each soft-serve session comes the time to wash up. Fortunately, the lids, containers and attachments are dishwasher-safe. But I still have to rinse them off first, because the dispensing mechanism leaves a lot of residue.
More than just soft-serve
To be fair, the Ninja Creami Swirl isn’t just a soft-serve machine: it can also make all other types of ice cream, sorbet, frozen yoghurt and milkshakes. The dispensing function and additional pre-programmed options for more liquid variations of ice cream come at a premium of about 100 francs or euros. The standard Ninja Creami without these extras costs 200 francs or euros.
Whether this premium is justified depends on how much of a soft-serve fan you are. I’m torn. The effort is enormous, and the machine is twice the size of the non-Swirl Creami – but the soft-serve won over every single taster.
In a nutshell
Soft-serve, yay – effort, nay
The Ninja Creami Swirl doesn’t just make regular ice cream – it also makes soft-serve that can be dispensed straight into a cone like from those big machines. It’s great fun, and the included recipe produces excellent soft-serve.
But getting there takes a lot of effort. The machine itself neither mixes nor chills the base. That means you have to prepare it in a separate bowl with a separate mixer and freeze it 24 hours in advance. You then need to work through several more steps before dispensing the soft-serve. On top of that, the blending process that turns the frozen mixture into ice cream is really loud, the presets don’t always hit the mark, and the Ninja Creami Swirl takes up a lot of space. So, is it worth the effort? The answer depends on how much you love soft-serve.
Pro
- Soft-serve experience
- Good base recipe
- Looks and tastes perfect
- Many ice cream varieties possible
Contra
- Complicated process
- Large and loud machine
- Can make only one flavour at a time
Lorenz Keller
Senior Editor
Lorenz.Keller@digitecgalaxus.chGadgets are my passion - whether you need them for the home office, for the household, for sport and pleasure or for the smart home. Or, of course, for the big hobby next to the family, namely fishing.
These articles might also interest you
31 comments
later