We All Scream
New ice cream flavors recall your best childhood summers
It’s the first weekend after Memorial Day, kids are off from school in many places, and the weather is beautiful. No matter what the calendar officially says, it’s summer.
That means one thing and one thing only: Ice Cream!
Back when I was a kid, that meant waiting on your stoop for the “Ice Cream Man” — preferably Mister Softee and his soft served cones (though a Strawberry Shortcake bar worked fine in a pinch). For special occasions, we’d get in the car for a trip to the real ice cream shop for a scoop of Baskin-Robbins or a Carvel cone.
There might be more ice cream choices today, but the experience is the same: Ice cream is summer in a cup or a cone.
Here are the best summer ice cream flavors to try.
Salt & Straw
Maybe nothing says summer like a freshly baked fruit pie. I recall one summer in Alaska, while driving from Seward to Anchorage, I stopped at a cafe in a town called Moose Pass. It was about 10 p.m., the sun was still high in the sky, and the little diner was serving pie filled with locally grown berries. That must have been the best pie I’ve ever had, and every summer I recall that little cafe in that tiny town. Salt & Straw’s summer flavors pay tribute to the pie with a bounty of options. They’re available online and at a Salt & Straw scoop shop near you.
Since I yearn for that Moose Pass pie, I’ve a hankering for Salt & Straw’s Wild-Foraged Berry Slab Pie that starts with a salted vanilla ice cream base and fold in wildberry pie filling and double-baked pie crust.
As a huge fan of rhubarb pie, I want the Rhubarb Crumble with Toasted Anise. Vanilla ice cream, once again, serves as the base for rhubarb jam and a toasted anise crumble.
If you’re adventurous, go for the Gruyere and Tomato Custard Tart, which starts with a salt and pepper custard ice cream, then adds tomato and gruyere jam and buttery pie crust into the mix.
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream
Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams is famous for its interesting flavors that are usually steeped in nostalgia, as ice cream should be. The 2025 summer collection reads like a summer day at a seaside boardwalk. Find the flavors online and at a Jeni’s scoop shop, except for the Target-exclusive Watermelon Taffy flavor.
Do you remember bubble gum blowing contests and that first delicious taste of the sugary pink of a Bazooka or Bubble Yum as a kid? Jeni’s recreates your best childhood days with its Pink Bubble Gum, described as tasting “like the first (and best) 30 seconds of classic gum”. The ice cream gets its bubble gum flavor from strawberries, guava, and mango, and its pink hue from beetroot.
Nothing says summer like a Root Beer Float. Jeni’s is made with a root beer ice cream base, sprinkled with marshmallows, recalls “the creamy, refreshing, frothy foam atop a frosty mug of root beer”.
Watermelon Taffy, available only at Target, tastes like sour watermelon candies, and we are here for it. We’re going to top it with prosecco and dress it with a touch of pink salt and a party hat of mint for the perfect summertime treat.
Tillamook
If you grew up in New York City, you remember going to the corner ice cream fountain for an egg cream. This simple yet perfect drink mixed milk, syrup (chocolate or vanilla usually, though my mother asked for both), and soda water. They were always paired with a pretzel rod. We’d dip the pretzel into the egg cream to get a sweet, salty treat that still to this day reminds me of Brooklyn in the summertime. Tillamook is available at your favorite grocery store.
Tillamook’s Salty Caramel Pretzel gives off those same summer-in-the-city vibes with its salted vanilla ice cream base, chocolate-covered pretzel pieces, and a caramel ribbon running through it.