Ice cream is a freezer staple. You want to have at least one pint ready at all times. Maybe you want to top a freshly baked cookie or a slice of pie with a cold scoop of your favorite flavor. Or it’s a scorching hot morning and you want to start your day with a delicious affogato. Or you just want a nice cold snack.
Our point is, that you don’t ever want to find yourself in a situation where you need ice cream and don’t have it. That would be tragic.
So you should definitely find your favorite flavor and keep it in the freezer year-round. But unless you’re in your mini-fridge era, your freezer likely has enough room for more than one flavor of ice cream. And that extra space should be reserved for taking a chance. Especially in summer, when the best ice cream brands go all out and launch the coveted seasonal flavors.
We rounded up all the new limited-time-only ice cream flavors from our favorite premium brands and ranked them from least essential to most delicious.
6. Salt & Straw — Huckleberry Cornbread Pudding
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
Before we get into this flavor, let me just say I love Salt & Straw as a brand. The ice cream is high quality, the ingredients are well sourced, and the flavors are generally pretty creative. So I wanted desperately to rank this one higher, but it just wasn’t delivering on the promise of its name, look, or description.
This flavor consists of huckleberry-infused ice cream with bits of cornbread throughout. The ice cream is slightly tart with a dark blueberry-forward flavor. The cornbread bits are spread thin throughout the ice cream, which sounds disappointing but is actually a good thing considering when you do get one, they’re a soggy, globby mess. This ice cream sounds like a good idea but didn’t quite nail its execution.
That thick luxuriousness that is typical of the brand is here though, so it at least comes across as high quality and worth its $15 price tag. I just don’t love the flavor, so for me, it’s a pass.
The Bottom Line:
A promising flavor idea that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Pick up a pint here.
5. Häagen-Dazs — New York Strawberry Cheesecake
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
Whether or not you like this one is going to come down to how much you like cheesecake ice cream. You’re trading intense sweetness in for… less intense sweetness and a soft-cheese aftertaste. If that’s your thing, you’re going to love this, if it’s not, you can probably skip this one.
As a cheesecake ice cream, it’s one of the best. It’s incredibly rich, soft on the tartness, and features some nice texture via graham crackers. The swirl of strawberry sauce keeps things bright and fruity.
The Bottom Line:
I like it, but I don’t love it. Take that opinion with a grain of salt though because I’m not the biggest cheesecake ice cream fan personally.
Pick up a pint here.
4. Van Leeuwen — Honeycomb
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
If you were hoping for an ice cream that captures the interesting floral sweetness of honey, keep hoping, because this isn’t that. That isn’t to say Van Leeuwen’s Honeycomb isn’t any good though, it’s delicious!
The flavor is dominated by a rich, earthy, caramel flavor, mixed with vanilla, and the occasional caramel candy bite. The candy pieces are a bit like Werther’s Original in flavor, but much softer and chewier in texture, while still providing a nice crunch.
The Bottom Line:
The ultimate summer pick for the caramel-obsessed.
Pick up a pint here.
3. Ben & Jerry’s — PB S’more
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
PB S’more is the only ice cream flavor on this list that wasn’t seasonal. But it was released just this year, so we’re going to go ahead and count it. Also, it has peanut butter cups in it, so not including it in a list of the best premium ice creams is practically a crime.
PB S’More features chops of peanut butter cups, graham cracker shards, and marshmallow swirls in a toasted marshmallow ice cream base, and it’s every bit as delicious as it sounds. The ice cream is sweet but is well-balanced with some rich toasted elements which keep it from coming across as too intense, while the fillings help to add some texture and bursts of contrasting flavor.
My only gripe? I would’ve liked more chocolate. But it’s hard to complain when ice cream is this good.
The Bottom Line:
A great summertime substitute for an actual s’more.
Pick up a pint here.
2. Jeni’s — Double Dough
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
Truthfully, all of Jeni’s new summer flavors (shout out to Tahini Oat) are worth picking up, maybe there is a way I could write about some more of them before summer closes, but if I had to pick just one flavor from the new set, its gotta be Double Dough.
Cookie dough ice cream is one of those flavors that is amazing from a conceptual standpoint but often lacking in its execution. What you get with your typical cookie dough is a bad vanilla ice cream with the occasional chocolate chip, and a few globs of cookie dough spread throughout. Jeni’s Double Dough asks the question — “what if the ice cream itself was cookie dough flavored?”
And it’s delicious. The ice cream is a mix of brown sugar earthiness, a light caramel sweetness, and a vanilla richness with just a touch of sea salt and a buttery finish. It tastes a lot like pure cookie dough. The ice cream also features chocolate chip cookie dough pieces throughout, which give you that double dose of cookie dough flavor the name promises.
The Bottom Line:
The best cookie dough ice cream ever.
Pick up a pint here.
1. McConnell’s — Vanilla With California Brittle
Thoughts & Tasting Notes:
I’m a big See’s Candy fan, so this ice cream is essentially targeted to me and anyone else who loves a box of See’s. The ice cream features McConnell’s delicious vanilla ice cream infused with See’s Candies’ almond brittle.
The result is creamy and vanilla-forward with bits of buttery almond, rich semi-sweet dark chocolate, and the slightest hint of salt to balance out the sweet and rich flavors. Topping the ice cream is an infusion of salty almonds and a fudge-like chocolate swirl.
This is a near-perfect ice cream in my book. The sort of flavor that deserves permanent menu status.
The Bottom Line:
Tried and true nutty and rich mix-ins infused into an elevated vanilla ice cream.
Pick up a pint here.