Whipping up your own ice cream is one of those things that you may have dismissed as a fiddly faff, but it’s actually super easy if you’ve got one of these great ice cream makers. It’s a fuss-free desert for a dinner party, plus you know all the ingredients going into it and you can be creative till your heart’s content. Whether you go for one of the freeze-first ice cream makers or self-freezing, here’s five of the best to get you started…

1. Looks chic on your countertop

The Cuisinart ICE31U Deluxe Iced Dessert Maker (£140) is one of the most stylish ice cream makers on the market, and one that will look smart on your countertop. It’s compact if you want to store it away too. This one falls into the pre-freeze category, which means you’ll need to pop the detachable bowl into the freezer overnight, but when you’re ready to make, the ice cream will be churned and ready in 25 minutes.

With this ice cream maker the bowl spins instead of the paddle and makes 1.4 litres of ice cream. It’s also perfect for fruity frozen yoghurt and sorbets as it has as handy frozen fruit paddle that easily blends down fresh mango and berries. Delicious.

2. The perfect all rounder

This Lakeland stainless steel digital ice cream maker ticks all the boxes. At £79.99 it’s fairly priced, is neat and compact (although still holds 1.5 litres of ice cream) and it makes such seriously delicious and creamy ice cream, it will be hard to go back to shop bought.

This ice cream maker is another where you pre-freeze the inner bowl for at least 12 hours (it doesn’t take up too much space in the freezer). Then just pour in the ingredients and the paddle will churn your ice cream. The clear lid makes it easy to see the consistency of the ice cream and it has a convenient countdown timer to when it’s ready. It also comes with the Lakeland quiet mark and barely makes a sound.

3. The add-on to your mixer

This one is for those of you that have invested in the beautiful Smeg stand mixer; it’s an add on attachment (£99.95) to make ice cream. It’s easy to use as you just clip the (pre-frozen) ice cream bowl into the mixer bowl and it’s good to start churning 1.1 litres of ice cream using the mixing beater. This one will make anything from gelato to granita and is perfect for not cluttering up your kitchen with lots of appliances.

4. The self-freeze ice cream makers

The Cuisinart Ice Cream and Gelato Professional ICE100 (£300) ice cream maker is more on expensive side because it’s got an instant freeze compressor system. Which you don’t have anything to do hours before you want to make your ice cream and don’t have to find space in the freezer.

This machine makes 1.5 litres of frozen treats and comes with two different paddles, one for ice cream and one for gelato. Gelato tends to have a higher quantity of milk and less cream and eggs than ice cream and tends to be churned more slowly and therefore is a little denser and silkier.

5. The new makers on the block

KitchenAid’s ice cream maker (£129.99) works in a similar way to the Smeg ice cream makers, attaching on to your existing KitchenAid stand mixer (it works with the 4.3L and 4.8L tilt-head mixers and 4.8L and 6.9L bowl-lift mixers). You’ll still need to pre-freeze the bowl, but it makes 1.9 litres of ice cream, more than most of the ice cream makers on the market and does it in around 20 minutes.

That’s not the only attachment you’ll want though, KitchenAid have also just brought out a brilliant new Ice Shaver (£129). In the same way as the KitchenAid ice cream makers it fits onto the stand mixer and can make more than a pint of shaved ice in 60 seconds. Watermelon granita anyone?

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