5 Best Ice Cream Shops near Stowe

“great ice cream! great customer service! definitely recommend stopping in!“

“Noel was a superb tour guide. It is very interesting to see how the ice cream is created and the background of Ben & Jerry, the founders. And how it all started. Great taste testing at the end with their delish Strawberry Cheesecake. The chocolate chip cookie dough sample was yum~oh!!“

“By far one of my favorite places for a refreshing TREAT! There is no where else around like it, fresh ingredients and great service. I don’t know about you, but I love seeing young employees contributing to the community workforce and that’s exactly what you’ll see here. Not to mention the owner and her family are so SO sweet and you’re apt to see at least one of them when you visit! My FAV is the green river rez bowl with added Nutella, you WON’T be disappointed! — Highly recommend!“

“PB S'more: New from Ben & Jerry’s (BJ’s) for 2024, this flavor is meant to evoke thoughts of the classic campfire dessert with a peanut butter twist. The base ice cream is a toasted marshmallow that has chunks of peanut butter cups, graham cracker pieces, and marshmallow swirls. By itself, the marshmallow ice cream is a bit boring and comes off as a somewhat bland sweet flavor, but thankfully the inclusion of the signature BJ's gooey marshmallow swirls and other mix-ins alleviates this potential problem. Short tangent, this is similar to BJ's other delicious s'mores ice cream (Gimme S'more). The big difference is the marshmallow flavor shines more in PB S'more as in Gimme S'more it gets somewhat masked by the chocolate cookie flavor and omitted marshmallow swirl. Of the three flavors in PB S'more, I detected mostly marshmallow and graham cracker as the peanut butter cups are not as numerous as the graham cracker pieces and omnipresent marshmallow flavor. Although the peanut butter cups are sparser (there's still plenty) than the graham cracker pieces, when encountered they do tend to be larger chunks (a fair trade-off in my opinion). In fact, I found one peanut butter cup that was entirely intact and not simply a chunk (see picture). My only complaint is that my pint could have used a more predominant marshmallow swirl. The swirl appears lugubrious if it can even be seen at all. Those of you looking for a peanut butter ice cream might be slightly disappointed, but for s'mores lovers, this is nearly perfect. Doughboy approved
My B&J's Favorites:
1.Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake
2. Gimme S'more
3. Dublin Mudslide
4. PB S'more
5. The Tonight Dough
Notable Mentions: Brewed to Matter, Chocolate Shake It, Netflix & Chilll’d
Doughboy_Food_Reviews“

“This is about as tourist trap as it gets. The Millennial Chum and I stopped in here on our way into Stowe this past weekend - I saw signs for cheese and chocolate and insisted this would be an ideal location for local swag (it wasn't; the mugs in the adjoining shop were $44. Insane.). This establishment is located in a building with several other stores, but it didn't take long for us to organically wander into this one. As mentioned in pretty much every other review, it's a lot to take in, chocolate-wise. There's a self-serve chocolate variety bin area where you can scoop out preferred flavors at $31/lb (yikes), along with tons of displays with wrapped bars and bags of individual candies. Unsurprisingly, there was a strong maple bent to a lot of the inventory.

I wasn't really in the mood for chocolate at the specific moment in time (and the Millennial Chum was right - it was overpriced for sure, no matter how good the overall quality of the chocolate) and opted for the ice cream, which was nestled in the back corner of the store. There were a few people behind the long counter but I was impressed that the minute I placed myself in front of the ice cream, someone immediately popped over to assist - some vigilance points there for sure.

Since I was still getting my Vermont sea legs, I went with a small cup of maple ice cream (I think $5ish). Really hit the spot. You can taste the artisanal/small batch goodness of this ice cream - just the right amount of creamy, just the right amount of density. While I was still in the middle of consuming the ice cream, I noticed a framed shout-out by the door indicating this ice cream had won a few local awards. Unsurprisingly. The Millennial Chum grabbed a few peanut butter cups, but no one was interested in emptying their wallet before we'd even gotten to our official destination of the trip.

We noticed after we got into town that this is a mini chain; there was a super cute location just off the main drag in Stowe located in a ye olde home with a porch that I would have preferred to go to instead purely for ambiance purposes. It's pricy; I would be surprised if locals are a significant part of the clientele here. As an aside, I did grab a chocolate mint crunch bar from a local mini mart later in the day, which was tasty but honestly nothing that would significantly set it apart from any other quasi-bougie chocolate. I was pleasantly surprised by the ice cream though.“