Nothing cools you down during the hot summer months quite like ice cream. The problem? Ice cream is expensive! Who wants to pay $5 for a pint of ice cream that you’ll polish off in two sittings? And that’s cheap compared to going to a scoop shop. No thanks.

Instead, why not make your own? The Cuisinart Pure Indulgence Frozen Yogurt-Sorbet and Ice Cream Maker puts that ability in your hands, allowing you to make 2 quarts of your favorite frozen delight in a mere 25 minutes. That’s less time than it takes to go to the store to buy ice cream, and you get more delicious results. And you can choose exactly what flavors you want as well. Peanut butter and banana? Sure, why not. Sweet cream and strawberries? Sounds delicious. Peanuts and stewed prunes? I’ll pass, but hey, it’s your ice cream maker. And that’s the beauty of it.

There’s no better way to cool off during these hot summer months than with a frosty blended drink. To make one, you’re going to need all of the required ingredients as well as a blender to mash them all together into a delicious blend.

Grab yourself one of these Hamilton Beach 52145H Dual Wave Blenders and you’ll have everything you need to be the life of any party. It has a huge 80 ounce pitcher that you can detach once you’re done blending and pour from. In addition, it has a little dispensing spout for letting people serve themselves. Can’t decide which drink to make? You can blend two drinks simultaneously with this bad boy, offering up pina coladas and margaritas at the same time. And if there’s a more popular guy at the cookout than the one wielding a pitcher filled with both pina coladas and margaritas, I’d like to meet him.

It’s now officially summertime, so you know what that means: cooking out on the grill. And just because we’re living in a city and not the suburbs with their decks and sprawling lawns doesn’t mean we don’t have just as much of a right to grill. It’s an American tradition! You just need a grill that’ll fit your space, be it a small backyard, a fire escape, a roof, or that patch of concrete next to your building. A grill such as the Weber 441001 One-Touch Silver-Series Kettle Charcoal Grill for Outdoor Use is just what you need.

The name Weber is basically synonymous with grills, and for good reason: they know what they’re doing. The classic black shape is perfect for holding charcoal and grilling up a bunch of burgers and hot dogs, and it’s small and portable enough to work in an urban setting. No giant propane tank needed, no multiple levels of grates, just a reasonably-sized grill that’ll let you cook burgers outside. It’s the American way.

Air conditioning, as I’m sure you’re aware, is a seriously expensive luxury. Between paying for the window unit itself to the insane amount of energy it takes to run the thing, you’ll really notice the hit on your wallet that keeping your apartment chilly requires. Isn’t there a better way? Well, I’m not going to claim that I have the perfect solution, but let me recommend a subtle alternative: a desk fan pointed at your face.

Yes, no matter how hot it is, a desk fan pointed at your face point blank always provides relief. Just set up something like the Vornado 530B Compact Air Circulator and Fan close to your face, turn it on, and experience immediate relief. It’ll save you loads of money both up front with its low cost and with how little energy it uses. Sure, it won’t cool your entire apartment down to 60 degrees, but you aren’t in your entire apartment, you’re sitting at your desk. Let’s not get greedy here.

The secret to world-class pizza is still a secret. But if you want to create very good pizza, we suggest Wimmeley’s PizzaDome. The PizzaDome is an authentic, brick oven with a natural clay dome, small enough to be portable but big enough to make great pizza. The handmade dome is perfect for retaining heat and radiating it evenly over your creation.

You’re still going to have to make the dough and the sauce, but hey, we can’t do everything. Here are a couple of suggestions, though. Many pizzerias will sell you some dough at a reasonable price. If you’re out of reach of a pizzeria, your local supermarket usually has Boboli pizza dough conveniently packaged and ready. Just add sauce and cheese, and you’re all set.

But back to the PizzaDome. It heats up in minutes and then holds the heat. The dome shape allows the heat to circulate freely for even cooking. Six openings let you bake six personal pizzas at once. PizzaDome provides a dough cutter and stainless steel spatulas to make cooking fun and easy.

So put on your chef hat. Get a big apron. Practice your Italian accent. Invite your family and friends over. Show off for your kids. The PizzaDome is the real deal; you’ll really have fun making pizza. The only thing better is eating it.

Ah, beer. The sweet nectar that heralds a weekend or evenings onset, the time to relax and enjoy some leisure. As everyone knows, beer is best when poured right from the tap, featuring more head and flavor than beer coming from bottles or cans. But you need to go to a bar for that. What if you want beer on tap in the privacy of your own home? You can’t buy a kegorator like some kind of frat guy.

No, you just need one of these Krups BeerTenders. It holds a 5 liter draught keg of Heineken and sits on your countertop. Whenever you want a fresh, cold beer, you simply fill a glass from the tap, just like at a bar. It keeps the keg cold silently, and it has a freshness indicator with a 30 day countdown. Not that you’ll need a full 30 days to finish a mini keg of beer. If you’re the kind of person who likes beer so much that you’re going to buy a tap apparatus like this, the chances are good that you’ll be refilling this thing once a week.

In cramped New York City apartments, every square foot is valuable. That means appliances had better make good use of the space they require. If you don’t cook all to often, you might think that having a stove in your kitchen isn’t all that reasonable. But what’re you to do the few times that you do want to bake something? You’ve got to think creatively.

That’s just what this Sharp R-820BW - Convection Microwave Oven does. It’s a microwave, sure, but it’s also a convection oven, allowing you to cook a crispy pizza without resorting to a gas oven. It’s nice and compact, fitting on your countertop, doing the job of two appliances at once. You simply choose which type of cooking you want it to do, and it’ll either microwave or bake whatever you put inside to perfection. So why give up those precious square feet of kitchen space to an oven you’ll never use? Consolidation is the name of the game.

Who has time to vacuum these days? With all the other things on your plate, can you really be expected to wrangle a vacuum cleaner all over your apartment on any type of regular basis? And who has room for a full-sized vacuum in their closets? It just doesn’t make sense.

What does make sense is the Roomba 56001 iRobot 560 Vacuum Cleaning Robot. It’s a Vacuum Cleaning Robot, people. What else are you looking for? This thing learns the layout of your apartment and will periodically go out and clean up after you while you’re at work. Simply stick the “Virtual Wall Lighthouses” around the walls and the Roomba will know just where to go, cleaning one room at a time before returning to its base station to charge back up. The result? You come home to an apartment with far fewer Dorito crumbs and stray hairs on the carpet and a closet that you have room to keep your shoes and clothes in. Everybody wins.

There are people who like their coffee, and then there are people who take their obsession with coffee to a new level. People who treat coffee like wine, like something that is only worth enjoying if it’s the best quality possible. For people like that, they need something a bit more than a cup of Chock Full O Nuts.

If you’re one such coffee devotee, allow me to introduce you to what’s sure to be at the top of your Christmas list this year: the Saeco S-PTP Primea Touch Plus Super Automatic Espresso Cappuccino Maker. This thing can make you the perfect espresso, cappuccino or latte without any of the messy work that usually goes into brewing such drinks. You can make two cups at once, and all you need to do is put in some high quality beans and it’ll take care of the rest. No more slumming it at Starbucks for you; nope, you’ll have the perfect coffee shop sitting right on your kitchen counter.

If you want to be able to make hot beverages whenever you want without the horrible, horrible hassle of boiling a kettle on the stove and scooping some powder into a cup, I feel your pain. It’s hard! And why should you be expected to do such work when your life is so full of trials already? You deserve a break.

Well, a break is just what the Braun Tassimo TA1200 Hot Beverage System will give you. All you need to do to make a hot cup of coffee, hot chocolate, or other flavored hot beverages is to stick in a T-Disc, insert a mug, and hit the start button. Within 30 seconds you’ll have a piping hot, perfectly measured cup of your favorite drink with no mess and no effort. It’s like having a coffee shop in your kitchen that doesn’t require you to pay a full-time worker, which is really the problem with such setups.