YOURLIFE

Hopes for an Indian summer maybe fading but there’s no reason you can’t bring a British holiday feel to your home. From ice cream to iced coffee, JUDY YORKE tries out six quirky products that will help you keep your cool. Chillfactor Colour Splash slushy maker, rrp £9.99 (stockists include Argos and John Lewis) This is brilliantly simple. You put the slushy maker in the freezer for at least 4-6 hours, then take it out and pour a drink in – we used apple juice. Squeeze it for about a minute and, because it’s so cold, the drink magically turns from liquid to an icy slushy. This impressed my 10-year-old son, Rory, immensely.

Verdict: Easy and quick but you need to remember to put it in the freezer. I put mine in before the morning school run and it provided a perfect post-school cool down. 9/10.

Judge Fro-Fru maker, £19.99, hartsofstur.com This machine transforms frozen fruit into a frozen sorbet/yoghurt dessert. You put your frozen ingredients in the top of the funnel and push down with the plunger.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I fed in some raspberries and slices of banana. At first nothing seemed to happen except for a lot of noise – this is not a quiet machine.

But soon a soft pink sausage of frozen dessert emerged from the chute. It had a lovely texture and was so cold it gave me brain freeze.

I thought this was great value and it makes a really good and very healthy dessert – it really is nothing but fruit. The fact that you freeze the fruit rather than the machine is a bonus if you have a small freezer.

Verdict: Noisy but extremely effective. 10/10

HyperChiller Iced Coffee Maker, £32.99, thefowndry.com If you hate hot drinks on a sweltering hot day but don’t like to miss your caffeine fix, this iced coffee maker is for you. Before the first use you have to pour water into two sections and then put the whole thing in the freezer for at least 12 hours.

The water creates two layers of ice to cool your drink. To make iced coffee, you simply pour hot coffee into the chiller and swish it around a few times. Then after one minute you pour it over ice into a glass.

If you don’t have/don’t like ice, just leave it another minute to cool down further.

This worked perfectly. It was a nice, refreshing, cold drink made pretty much instantly. It cools wine too.

Verdict: Simple and effective. It’s a bit on the bulky side, so might not be ideal if you only have a small freezer or ice box. 8/10

Shake N Make Ice cream maker £15.99, Firebox.com The huge advantage of this ice cream maker is you don’t need to freeze it first, so if the weather is unexpectedly hot, you can use it straight away.

You add ice and salt to the inner cup, pour your ingredients into the cone, put the cone in the cup, snap on the lid and shake for three minutes.

I tried the chocolate ice cream recipe in the accompanying booklet, mixing milk, cream, grated chocolate, cocoa powder and sugar.

Three minutes is a LONG time to shake a cup, and my arm was aching at the end, but I cheered myself up by thinking I must be burning up a few of the calories I was about to consume. When the time was up I opened the lid only to find that it was like a thick milkshake.

Perhaps I didn’t shake it hard enough. Two more minutes of vigorous shaking later, however, and the sides of the cone were plastered with ice cream, with just a little froth in the middle.

Verdict: It works, but it’s tiring. Also, the seal of the cup was fiddly and fell off twice, resulting in the ice and salt mixing with the ice cream (yuk). 6/10 Snow Cone Ice Crusher and Slush Maker, £49.95, prezzybox.com This is a sizeable machine that takes up quite a bit of space on the worktop (and in the cupboard), but it’s pretty effective. You simply pour ice cubes into the top, press down on the handle and hey presto – you’ve got crushed ice ready for smoothies, snow cones or cocktails. It really only does take a few seconds and the large capacity means you can make lots. The machine handily comes with four plastic cones which slot neatly into the side. When the process is done, you pull out the ice compartment, use the included scoop to remove the ice and slap it into one of the cones before adding your syrup. Verdict: Great for a family or a party, but will take up a lot of storage space in winter. On the expensive side, too. 7/10

My Ice Cream Maker, £24.95, jmphome.co.uk This comes with two mugs with YOURS and MINE printed on them, so it’s great if you’re possessive about your ice cream. You freeze the mugs beforehand but they’re quite bulky.

The machine is easy to put together and you pour your ingredients in through a chute at the side. I made simple banana ice cream using a recipe in the instruction booklet, and also tested out the mint choc chip recipe. When you switch it on, the paddles whirr round, mixing up your ingredients. The instructions say it can take up to 30 minutes to make ice cream, usually less.

After 15 minutes, mine was a thick custard, and after 30 it was very soft ice cream – fine to eat with a spoon, but I wouldn’t have fancied my chances of putting it in a cone. As suggested in the instructions, I popped it in the freezer to firm up.

Verdict: Easy to use and fairly speedy. 8/10