DIY ice cream that’s almost as easy as eating an entire pint

We all think we’re going to do it. Many of us even go out and buy the pricey special equipment for it. Because when summer’s heat hits, it’s hard not to fall for the cool, creamy romance of do-it-yourself ice cream.

Except that most of us will actually make ice cream at home all of about once… Maybe. Because while making ice cream isn’t difficult, it tends to be fussy. And most of us don’t do fussy all that well. Particularly when it’s so much easier to just flip on Netflix, grab a spoon and down an entire pint of purchased ice cream on the couch.

But what if there was an easier way to have homemade ice cream? Two recent ode-to-ice cream cookbooks suggest there is.

For the most fun take on ice cream ever, you need to check out Bryan Petroff and Douglas Quint’s “Big Gay Ice Cream” (Clarkson Potter, 2015), a hilariously over-the-top book inspired by the duo’s soft serve ice cream trucks and shops of the same name. These are the men who dreamed up crazy delicious cones like the “Salty Pimp” (vanilla ice cream, dulce de leche, nuts and salt) and Mountain Dew sorbet.

Tucked deep in the book — which is written and designed to resemble an ’80s high school yearbook — is a must-make recipe: cheater soft serve ice cream. It’s really kind of brilliant.

It goes something like this: Soften 3 cups of store bought vanilla ice cream. Then use a stand mixer to beat the ice cream with 1 cup of lightly sweetened whipped cream. Transfer to a bowl, then cover tightly with several layers of plastic wrap pressed onto the surface. Freeze for at least 12 hours. Homemade soft serve ice cream!

And then there is Leslie Bilderback’s “No-churn Ice Cream” (St. Martin’s, 2015), which offers 100 less hilarious, but nonetheless delicious recipes for ice cream that require no special equipment and no hard work. She does a great job walking you through utterly easy recipes, everything from basic vanilla and chocolate to more robust creations, such as sweet potato-marshmallow swirl ice cream.

None of this, of course, means you can’t still eat a pint on the couch.