Quest for the Best: Cold Stone Creamery Edition

Location: Various locations

Website: Cold Stone Creamery official site

Atmosphere: Every Cold Stone Creamery looks a bit different, but for the most part, it’s an assembly line of ice cream and toppings. You walk by the display of the various toppings on your way to the end of the line, then you come face to face with the variety of ice cream flavors available. There are many pre-existing “creations” to be had—ice cream and toppings blends that Cold Stone has already concocted—or you can put your own together. Just tell the ice cream jockey behind the counter what flavor you want and with what toppings, and they’ll chop it all together for you on a stone slab before scooping the mix in a cup or cone.

My Review: There’s really no need to wax poetic about Cold Stone Creamery; it’s good ice cream made into any sort of concoction you can imagine. But I do wonder what the best possible blend is. I’m a fan of creating my own, rather than going with one already on the Cold Stone menu, and I tend to favor the various candy mix-ins available. Despite being a bit of a chocoholic, I actually don’t care for chocolate ice cream, so I tend to stick with either Sweet Cream (for a basic sweet flavor) or Cake Batter (for ultimate creamy goodness) as my base ice cream flavor. The graham cracker pie crust mix-in adds an interesting texture and flavor, so that usually factors into my blend, as well as either Heath Bar or Butterfinger (which work better in ice cream than other candies, like Snickers, which when frozen can both chip teeth and cut glass). Recently I had a Sweet Cream blend with graham cracker, peanut butter, and Butterfinger that was like heaven in a tiny bowl.

So my question to the three of you who regularly read this site, is what is the ultimate Cold Stone Creamery creation? The next time I’m there, I’m thinking of something involving Gummi Bears and rainbow sprinkles and calling it “Rainbow Brite on Acid”.