Cold Stone ice cream is on its own level when it comes to frozen desserts. There are so many flavors and fabulous mix-ins to choose from, and there’s the magic of watching ice cream masters manipulate your creation on that namesake cold slab. To honor our love of this glorious place, here are all the Cold Stone flavors ranked worst to best.
Coco Chanel famously advised, “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take at least one thing off.” We took her advice and omitted all the mix-ins to taste every single ice cream flavor – yup, all 20 of them – to devise our ranking.
From classic offerings like strawberry and pistachio to the more unusual flavors like rum raisin and cotton candy, we got a belly ache just for you. What can we say? You’re worth it.
That being said, thanks for holding all 20 of our cups. We’ll take them back now!
Here Are All The Cold Stone Flavors Ranked From “Meh” to “Obsessed”
20. Rum Raisin
First things first: yup, there’s rum in there. We’re certain that people who like rum will really lyke it. Woohpsy we mght b a little drunk?
Needless to say, it’s rum-forward, but it might be overcompensating because we couldn’t taste the raisins. On second thought, that might be a good thing. Anyway, Jack Sparrow can keep this one.
19. Strawberry
It’s good! But that’s it. It tastes like every other strawberry ice cream anyone has ever had. We wouldn’t waste a trip to Cold Stone for this one.
Of course, if you add in a truckload of toppings, then we’re talking.
18. Marshmallow
We’ll hand it to Cold Stone for taking on the challenge of trying to make anything taste distinctly like a marshmallow. You know, seeing how it really isn’t a specific flavor past “sweetness.”
It tastes like vanilla ice cream, which isn’t all bad! But we all know that marshmallows ain’t don’t hit their prime until you toast them. And add graham crackers and chocolate. And then throw them in the fire and just eat the graham cracker and chocolate. We said what we said.
17. Cotton Candy
We’re not huge fans of cotton candy ice cream in general, but we were pleasantly surprised by this one. It wasn’t overwhelmingly artificial tasting, but there was a bit of an aftertaste. Like, a bad one, if that wasn’t clear.
The blue can be cool or off-putting depending on who you are (fun or not fun). We’d boil this down to basically tasting like blue-colored vanilla.
16. Watermelon Sorbet
This one was an adventure. It was like eating a less sweet, soft watermelon Jolly Rancher. Maybe because we’ve eaten more than our fair share of the ol’ Ranchers, we kept expecting more. This sorbet had a creeping sweetness, but never actually got anywhere.
Excuse us, we need to sit with that metaphor of us and our careers for a moment.
15. Sweet Cream
Solid. It tastes like sweetened cream. (It’s in the name!) There’s no reason and should should be no expectation for it to be anything more.
It delivers. No more and no less, so we can’t really be mad at this quiet quitter of an ice cream flavor.
14. Banana
This ice cream is incredible. Banana lovers everywhere will be impressed. It’s the most authentic-tasting banana-flavored product we’ve ever had. And we once tried a banana-flavored Kit Kat.
But its strength is its downfall. It tastes exactly like a blended banana, so once the initial amazement at the accuracy of the flavor died down, we found ourselves wondering. Why wouldn’t we just… eat a banana?
13. Cheesecake
This creamy, slightly tangy version of vanilla is good, don’t get us wrong. But if you say “cheesecake,” we are going to be searching for that graham cracker crust, and we are going to be disappointed when we don’t find it.
Give us graham cracker crust or give us… a different flavor of ice cream.
12. Silk Chocolate Almond Milk
Dairy-free friends, rejoice! This Cold Stone flavor is absolutely delicious. The chocolate flavor isn’t incredibly strong, but it’s a more-than-satisfying sweet treat.
The texture isn’t quite as velvety as some of the other options, since it doesn’t have any of that creamy dairy in it. But we all wore those Juicy tracksuits in middle school, so don’t go telling us that you’re above fake velvet.
11. Pistachio
No pistachio on earth tastes like this. It smells and tastes like maraschino cherries and looks like mint, and we’re fine with that. It’d certainly satisfy our ice cream craving, but never our pistachio craving. Shockingly, we don’t get a lot of those, so we’re content.
10. Cherry Vanilla
This scoop is studded with generous cherry chunks, so maybe it’s cheating in our “no mix-in” taste test. But still, it deserves points for game play.
The ice cream itself tastes mostly like vanilla, but the chunks are big enough that we get a good, healthy dose of fruit flavor. Hear that, doc? We’re eating fruit.
9. French Vanilla
Cadillac should start calling itself the Cold Stone vanilla of cars, because this is just a great vanilla done right. Don’t come for us, Caddy.
Thick, creamy, and flavorful, we’ll take this on a slice of warm apple pie any day. Would it be our first choice if we’re going out for ice cream? Nah, probably not. But it’s a great base for any mix-in you desire. Yes, even the completely impractical gummy worms.
8. Mint
We encourage mint ice cream haters to try this one. It’s a pleasant, subtle mint that won’t burn your nose but won’t leave mint fans wanting. It could be the ice cream to facilitate world peace. Cold Stone, why have you been holding out on the United Nations?
And perhaps a controversial opinion, but we like that there aren’t any chips in it. As much as we love chocolate, the frozen variety in the classic mint chocolate chip flavor interrupts the eating experience. And we like to stay focused. Hey was that a squirrel?
7. Coffee
Similar to the mint, this coffee ice cream might bridge the divide between lovers and haters of coffee ice cream. There’s not an overwhelming coffee flavor, but enough to know it’s there.
The kiddos could even enjoy it, if they’re at that phase when they think it’s cool to have coffee-flavored things. Without the actual caffeine, please. We don’t want a repeat of The Great Frappuccino Mix-Up of 2018.
6. Chocolate
Boom. Pow. Wallop. Other superhero words to describe how strong the chocolate comes in here.
This super chocolatey ice cream is well rounded, and actually highlights the bitterness of chocolate without making it unappetizing. Color us impressed, with a chocolate ice cream mustache.
5. Cake Batter
It’s like a spoonful of yellow cake batter, without the fear of salmonella that you might sometimes kinda think about but definitely still ignore. We love this one. We’d invite it to our birthday party. As uh…a guest that we totally wouldn’t eat…
4. Chocolate PB
If we see a ribbon of peanut butter running through anything, we’re gonna get excited. Yes, we said anywhere. And we meant it, too. Luckily, this peanut butter swirl is nestled comfortably in a bed of chocolate ice cream, just as we’ve often dreamed of.
The peanut butter is just salty enough to play perfectly off of its own sweetness, as well as that of the chocolate. Chef’s kiss to the inventor of this perfect combination.
3. Oreo
We don’t know how this tastes like the best Oreo ice cream we’ve ever had without any chunks. It’s as if the Oreo flavor is magically infused into creamy ice cream.
They are wizards, and we bow down. Wingardium Lev-Oreo-sa.
2. Cookie Dough
Edible cookie dough has been having a years-long moment, but Cold Stone has taken it to the next level. This tastes at first like brown sugar ice cream, but the flavors build to somehow include everything you’d taste in chocolate chip cookie dough. We don’t even need the beat to drop.
And they manage to do it without including the chocolate chips or leaving out the nostalgia. The ice cream also has the fluffiest texture of all the flavors, which is a fun contrast to the normal heaviness of cookie dough. Huh? No, the heaviness definitely has nothing to do with the fact that we’re 19 flavors deep.
1. Butter Pecan
We love an underdog story and we love this ice cream. We expected butter pecan to be middle-of-the-road, but we were blown away by this one. It tastes fully like a bite of butter pecan ice cream, but without including the actual pecans.
It’s like every molecule of ice cream is infused entirely with the whole flavor profile of butter pecan. These are the scientists we need in the world, and this is the ice cream we need in our mouths. Can you work on teleportation next so we can come to Cold Stone everyday?
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