Making ice cream at home is a cherished American summer pastime. Nowadays it’s an easy task, too, thanks to an array of ice cream-making machines available online. Makeicecream.com is a great destination for aspiring ice cream chefs. It carries a selection of machines, as well as ice cream and frozen yogurt recipes and the history of ice cream. A Cuisinart Supreme commercial quality ice cream maker costs $300, but Cuisinart’s soft serve ice cream maker is only $129. The Supreme would probably make ice cream as good as the kind you get at an ice cream shop; the soft serve is fun to have at kids’ parties. Have you ever seen the chefs on Iron Chef USA (a Food Network TV show) concoct their amazing recipes for gelato, sherbets and ice cream in record time? They’re using a Musso Lussino 4080 Ice Cream Maker, the Porsche of ice cream makers and costs $700. More affordably, Target carries a Deni Automatic Ice Cream Maker for $50. This motorized machine makes ice cream in about 20 minutes and comes with a candy crusher to make toppings. If you want to replicate your childhood summers cranking the ice cream machine, try the White Mountain Hand Operated Ice Cream maker ($160; pictured). Snow cone machines are also widely available and quite affordable, such as the Nostalgia Electrics old-fashioned carnival-style snow cone maker ($31.49). And Hawaiianshavedice.com has a shaved ice machine for $35. You can buy cool combinations of different bottles of flavored syrup, such as strawberry, banana, kiwi and tamarind.