Chill out with these easy-to-make treats

is that they freeze too hard and can be nearly impossible for even the most well-muscled wrists to scoop. A big part of that is because the base ingredients often don’t freeze fast enough while churning, which allows larger and more stubborn ice crystals to form in the finished product.

The balance of water, sugar, fat and add-in ingredients also plays a role. Too much or too little of one, and you’ll either have ice cubes or soup on your hands. Anyone who’s tried cutting back the quantity of sugar in a recipe only to find an unscoopable iceberg in their freezer has encountered this outcome.

Fortunately, there are some simple solutions that require minimal effort or ingredients.

Let’s start with ice cream. Our recipe relies on two elements: heavy whipping cream and sweetened condensed milk. We first whip all that cream into soft peaks and then whisk in the milk until a perfect, fluffy state is achieved.

You can fold in nearly any sort of ingredient at this point before freezing — we went with crushed Oreos for a dreamy cookies and cream — and because all that air has already been beaten into the mixture, it will remain comparatively soft, even without an ice cream maker.

You can also start with frozen ingredients. In this case, we’ve blitzed a bag of frozen strawberries with yogurt in a food processor to make a fruity frozen yogurt. Our recipe will be ready to eat with a soft-serve texture the second you’re done blending. Once frozen it’ll stiffen up, but not to a subzero degree that makes it difficult to serve.

Alcohol is another secret weapon. Booze doesn’t freeze, as anyone with a bottle of vodka in the freezer knows. A splash or two added to any frozen dessert base — ice cream included — will help make the finished product ever-so-slightly softer. It doesn’t take much. A couple teaspoons added to a recipe will help keep a quart of frozen dessert soft.

We’ve put that principle to work in a sorbet and granita.

The sorbet is made with fresh fruit and a simple syrup that can be pureed in a blender or food processor. With blackberries, raspberries, cherries and blueberries (which we used) in season right now, this is a great way to preserve that freshness for a couple months. We added a splash of flavorless vodka to the mix, which keeps it silky smooth.

Granita is probably the simplest of frozen desserts to make.

It’s generally a simple sugar and water mixture flavored with something — we used an elegantly bitter coffee — that’s slowly frozen on a sheet pan and periodically scraped into chunky ice flakes as it sets. Ours includes a pour of coffee liqueur that boosts the flavor and prevents those ice crystals from solidifying into a solid block after it’s transferred to a container for longer storage.

Keep it cool this summer, Texas, however you get your frosty satisfaction.