Your guide to a better future

It's officially ice cream season. You can make the good stuff at home with this discounted machine.

Senior Editor / Home and Kitchen

I live in Brooklyn where I write about food subscriptions, cooking, kitchen gadgets and commerce. Anything with sesame is my all-time favorite food this week.

Making ice cream at home is undeniably fun (and saves money) but churning out batches with one of those old-fashioned hand-crank machines loses its luster pretty quickly. An electric ice cream maker is a far more realistic way to go if you plan on using it regularly. Right now, Cuisinart's popular 1.5-quart machine is down to $55 on Amazon  -- a full $21 cheaper than we found it anywhere else.

While we haven't had the chance to test this Cuisinart model yet, the compact ice cream machine scores high marks on Best Buy , Amazon and other retailers. There's no rock salt or manual cranking involved in the process, but you will need to make sure the double-insulated inner freezer bowl is frozen solid (it takes about eight hours to freeze) to make each batch. From there, you can create any number of simple ice cream, gelato, sorbet and frozen yogurt recipes in 35 minutes.

Another option is the Ninja Creami ice cream maker , which I tested -- and loved. The pricier model doesn't require a frozen bowl; just frozen custards that it spins into perfectly creamy ice cream in about three minutes. Read my Ninja Creami review here .