Seasonal Ninja Creami Recipes: Pumpkin, Peppermint and Eggnog

Seasonal recipes are mostly classic cream bases dressed for the calendar, which makes them some of the most reliable pints on the site. A pumpkin spice, peppermint or eggnog base has the full fat and sugar of our standard vanilla, so it runs on the Ice Cream program and came out scoopable with no re-spin on every model we tried. The work is in the flavoring and the mix-in step, not the spin.

Cold dulls flavor, and seasonal spices suffer most. A base that tastes right at room temperature comes out of the freezer bland, so we season to slightly too strong: 1 1/2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice per 16 oz pint, a full teaspoon of peppermint extract, a generous grating of nutmeg in the eggnog. Pumpkin purée earns its place beyond flavor, because the fiber gives the pint body the way a nut paste does in gelato, and canned eggnog is already a sweetened custard that spins dense with a little milk to thin it.

The mix-in step is what makes these look like the season. Crushed candy cane, gingerbread cookie and chocolate chunks go in after the spin with the Mix-In program, which is on every current model, because anything added before freezing either dissolves or goes soft. The base ratios page gives the cream base and the spice amounts we start from, and each card lists the 1.5x quantities for a 24 oz XL tub.

Tips for seasonal recipes

• Season the base until it tastes slightly too strong at room temperature. Cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg survive the freezer; cloves and allspice need doubling.
• Use plain pumpkin purée, not pie filling, at about 1/2 cup per 16 oz pint. More than that and the base is too thick to level flat.
• Thin store-bought eggnog with 1/4 cup of whole milk per pint. Undiluted it spun chewy rather than creamy.
• Freeze flat for 24 hours at 0 F with the lid on. Purée bases hold a slope if the pint goes in tilted, and the first spin shows it.
• Run Ice Cream first, then make a hole to the bottom of the pint, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of mix-in and run Mix-In. Candy canes added before freezing dissolved into pink streaks.
• Make these a day ahead for a gathering and store the spun pint levelled and lidded. A single re-spin after refreezing brings it back.

Best model for seasonal recipes

The NC351 is our pick because seasonal pints are full-fat cream bases that spin perfectly on Ice Cream and Mix-In, two programs every model shares, so the deciding factors are the shortest Ice Cream cycle of the Creami series at 142 seconds, the quietest reading at 82 dB and the 16 oz pint, which lets you run three or four different flavors over a holiday week without a freezer full of half-eaten tubs. The NC351 review has the full-fat vanilla result that these recipes build on. If you are feeding a crowd, the NC501 or NC601 makes the same recipes in a 24 oz tub.

The recipes hub lists the other 13 categories. The kids category shares the Mix-In technique, and the gelato category covers the cooked custard route for a richer eggnog.