Yonanas 902 Classic Vegan Non-Dairy Frozen Fruit Soft Serve Dessert Maker, BPA Free, Includes 36 Recipes, 200-Watts, Silver

Why is this not a more prevalent appliance?!I finally made my first yonanas last night after procrastinating for weeks, thinking it’d be too much work and not taste that great. I was so wrong. I’m so glad I got this.Let me tell you, I am an ice cream addict. I could eat a whole half gallon tub of blue bell in one day. It is my Achilles’ heel when it comes to dieting. I’ve been doing a weight watchers for over a year now, and it’s been very effective. Except I can’t say no to ice cream, and then I binge and gain a ton back. I bought this machine as a kind of Hail Mary shot at finally finding a substitute. (Froyo bars are pretty good, but super expensive and only come in like 4 packs, that I want to eat all of…)I made the right decision. The blueberry yonana bowl I ate last night was delicious! And zero WW points!!Now, don’t get me wrong, it is NOT ice cream. It doesn’t taste like ice cream, it doesn’t look like ice cream. But it is a TREAT. It tasted more like froyo. And I can have it completely guilt free.It was also pretty filling, i.e. when I finished, I didn’t crave another bowl, but sat there in awe, savoring what I had just eaten.I wondered, and am still wondering, HOW IS THIS NOT MORE POPULAR?! How does it work sooo much better than a blender? (I had tried to make a similar ice cream substitute with the same frozen fruits and some Greek yogurt previously, but it was very disappointing)Is this a first try phenomenon? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I have an ice cream craving solution now that I think will satisfy me for ever.I don’t get me wrong, weight watchers is very clear about not eliminating foods, especially your favorite foods. But about learning moderation. Unfortunately, with ice cream, I have way too hard of a time stopping myself. And the idea of never having it again is too hard. The solution I came up with that sounds great in theory but have had trouble carrying out in reality, is to only have ice cream on special occasions. And that doesn’t mean find an excuse for special occasions to happen more often. And when I have ice cream it can only be blue bell, bc if I’m going to spend the points on ice cream, it better be the best ice cream in the world. Yonanas will get me through the rest of the year and hopefully train my body over time to crave fruits more than dairy. It is easily as good as any froyo I’ve ever had, and better than offbrand ice cream.I love that it came with a recipe book for instruction, inspiration, and portion suggestions.Set up was a cinch, it was already assembled so there was no confusion about where parts go. I to it apart before using to rinse it before use and see how it goes together. Easy.As far as the cleaning goes, I don’t know why anyone is saying it is hard. It was super easy to rinse all the pieces after making my bowl. And the base doesn’t get dirty at all.All in all I give this 15 stars.

We bought this for Christmas and our kids love it. If you read the instructions thoroughly (and the online reviews) then you will understand how to use it without issues. The main thing is to make sure that the frozen fruit is slightly thawed. And then eat it immediately, like immediately, before it melts! If it is too frozen when you try to blend it then it makes the blender work too hard and might mess up the motor. Additionally it just doesn't flow through the machine well. However, if it is too soggy and not frozen enough then it's just going to be cold squishy fruit. Also always disassemble the machine to get the extra half a cup of sorbet from inside the dispenser lid. It's easy to do and worth the effort to get all that extra good stuff.Once you know all of those things, it's really simple and fast to go from frozen fruit to a giant bowl of healthy fruit sorbet. It tastes as good as store bought, but it's all natural, no added sugar, no preservatives and no guilt!We buy the bags of frozen "mixed berries and cherries" from the grocery store and mix with frozen bananas when we blend it in the machine. So it's no effort really and my kids love it. It's like having healthy fruit magically morph into ice cream for a dessert.Also, this supplier delivered the item on time, in perfect condition, and the price was competitive. I have seen these items listed for as much as 60 and 70 dollars but also as low as $30. So shop around and find a good price and make sure that the supplier is actually delivering what they're advertising.

I was telling a couple of the girls at work yesterday about how I'd gotten a Yonana and how eager I was to try it. One of the other girls comes up and says, "You ordered a Yonana?" I said yes, thinking she was going to tell me wonderful things about it. Instead, she said she'd had one, that she hated it, and recommended that I immediately pack it up and ship it back without trying it. She claimed it was noisy and difficult to clean. She recommended getting a Ninja instead and said a Ninja is more versatile, but then she went on to say that she has to add liquid to her fruit, which defeats the purpose for why I'd ordered the Yonana in the first place. I'm on Weight Watchers, and I'd ordered the Yonana because all you need is fruit and fruit is zero points on Weight Watchers. What's not to love about "free" food? My co-worker also complained about needing to use two bananas for the Yonana and said that bananas are too high in carbs. High in carbs or not, bananas still count as "free" food on Weight Watchers and, contrary to what my co-worker said, you do not need to use two bananas nor do you need to use any bananas. So, being the stubborn person that I am, I decided not to take my co-worker's advice.Last night I got to try the Yonana. My assessment...it is noisy. So noisy that it should be packed up and shipped back? No. It's no more noisy than my blender or my son's juicer. And it is not difficult to clean. Not in the least little bit. In fact, I was a bit wary of the blades on the blade cone because they looked a bit evil, like they could scrape up a knuckle without a second thought - but the blades actually ended up being very easy to clean off. You can actually just run the parts under water and rinse them off, it cleaned up that easily. If my co-worker wants to see difficult to clean, she can borrow my son's juicer, which requires scrubbing with a toothbrush to get all the pulp out.I'd read some reviews on the Ninja and one of the reviews complained that the Ninja is a pain when you want to add additional ingredients because you have to take off the motor and take off a lid and there was another step that I don't remember. My co-worker agreed that you do need to do all that, but she poo-pooed that review as saying that's really not an issue. Well, I can't vouch for the Ninja, but I can say that adding fruit to the Yonana is very easy. You just pull out the plunger (which you can get a little bit of suction there) and pop in the fruit and then plunge away.Creating the "ice cream" is very quick. I mean, very quick! In less time than it takes to dig frozen real ice cream out of a tub, you can have a Yonana treat. (Well, okay, that might not be totally true as you do need to thaw your frozen fruit first...but take the thawing part out of the equation, you can have the Yonana treat more quickly than real ice cream and without the cussing and swearing.)There is no waste in ingredients with the Yonana. I am always astounded by my son's juicer at how much wasted product is left over. With the Yonana, you get to eat every bit of what goes into it. You will want to disassemble the unit right away, however, because you will find that some edible "ice cream" remains between the blade cover and the blade cone and some in the gasket too, but that's very easy to scrape out, put in the bowl, and enjoy. I did notice that it seems that the first bowl of Yonana gets cheated out of some of their treat and subsequent bowls seem to be more filled. I'm not sure what the reason for that is as it didn't appear that there was fruit left in the plunger. Maybe it's the amount of fruit that remains between the cone cover and blade cone? I don't know, but a solution is to make one big batch and then separate it into portions.The unit is much smaller than I'd expected it to be. It takes up less room than a toaster or a traditional blender or my son's gigantic juicer. It is tall, however. But if you leave it out on a countertop, height isn't an issue. It's the footprint that would be an issue.One thing I discovered that I don't really like about the design of the Yonana is that the spout the "ice cream" comes out is too close to the unit and sometimes the "ice cream" wants to curl back toward the unit and not into your bowl, even though I had the bowl pushed up next to the machine. A simple fix would be for the Yonana designer to make a longer spout. Next Yonana generation maybe. In the meantime, the user can use a higher bowl, or maybe a glass?Overall, am I 100% sold on Yonana? No. I wish I could say I am, but, after tasting my first creation, I think I'd rather just eat the fruit. The concoction does not taste like ice cream - it does, however, have the texture of soft serve ice cream. Oddly, my son, who drank a full 12 ounce glass of grainy juiced carrots without complaint made faces as he ate his banana/peach Yonana. He did eat it all, but I don't think he's going to be asking me to make him another Yonana treat. As for me, I do not like bananas, at all, and a few areas of my banana/berry tasted way too much like banana. (And, yes, I know, you do not need to use the bananas. I made my Yonana treat using just one banana, one half before the berries and one half after.) Am I going to ship my Yonana back? No. I'm going to give it more of a try. First off, a lot of the reviews and the Yonana owner's manual/recipe books all say to use ripe bananas. I didn't have ripe bananas. I just froze the bananas that were the most banged up looking and they really weren't all that ripe. So I'm hoping that bananas that are truly ripe and not simply banged up will make a difference. Also, I intend to give it a try using just fruit without the bananas. I am also hoping that in time I will move beyond the desire for my concoctions to be ice cream and that I'll just be happy that I'm having a Weight Watchers zero point treat. My husband also said that he thinks the Yonana will be a nice cold treat come summer when it's hot.So, do I recommend the Yonana? Yes, I do. In fact, despite my not being sold on the taste of my first creation, I do intend on sharing my Yonana experience with my Weight Watchers group as well as my friends. Like a few of the reviews said, if you want ice cream, go buy ice cream. If you want a good, healthy, zero point treat, then, by all means, get a Yonana. It's a good machine that does exactly what it's meant to do.Follow up - I tried again and used just a berry mix (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries) and four slices of peaches (no bananas). Very good. Even better, I mixed in a container of blueberry Fiber One yogurt (just one Weight Watchers point). Now, that was a good mixture that I can easily eat multiple times. It is runny, like soft serve ice cream that's melted, but, boy did it taste good.