Forget long weekends and beach days, the best part of summer is the ice cream! Sweet, cool, and available in a endless rainbow of colors and flavors, it's the one dessert we never get tired of. This Sunday, we're celebrating National Ice Cream Day by sharing our 13 favorite Instagram accounts devoted to the delicious delicacy. Prepare your sweet tooth and read on for some double-tap worthy cones.
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Ice cream alchemist Jeni Britton Bauer has two cookbooks and two decades of ice cream making under her belt. Her booming business, Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream, fills happy tummies in Ohio, Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, Charleston, L.A., and St. Louis with her "trired-and-true, often-copied, never-duplicated" flavors that include brown butter almond brittle, root beer, and wild-berry lavender.
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Forget Times Square and the Statue of Liberty: no trip to New York City is complete with a scoop (or two! or three!) from Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. The family-run business and unofficial landmark has been serving their unique desserts for almost three decades. The ever-changing line-up of flavors often includes lychee, almond cookie, green tea, black sesame, red bean, taro, don tot, durian, Thai iced tea, and more.
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Interested in the best small-batch ice cream ever? Head to Brooklyn where Steve's Ice Cream holds court. The creamy dreamy ice cream makers think locally and get their mix-ins from their famous neighbors: coffee from Blue Bottle, Ricotta from artisanal cheese maker Salvatore BKLYN, cookies from Ovenly, and more.
Fret not, ice cream addicts outside the five boroughs: Steve's magical ice cream can be yours without the plane fare via their online store.
Visit Lick's Instagram for a peek at their happy customers and into their kitchens (just don't forget to wear a bib to catch all that drool). The Texas-based ice creamers let their southern surroundings inspire their flavors with offerings like cilantro lime, dewberry corn cobbler,and sweet persimmon and sage.
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5. @CoolHaus
Follow Cool Haus on Instagram for drool-worthy snaps of their architecturally-inspired ice cream sandwiches featuring super creative limited edition flavors—like the "Netflix" variety, pictured here, with white cheddar popcorn-infused ice cream mixed with chopped up Doritos. Find out more about their fleet of ice cream trucks (serving Dallas, New York City, and California) and shop their sammies from home on their site.
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Bow down: You're in the presence of ice cream royalty. The Vermont based company are the inventors of chocolate chip cookie dough. That's right—there was once a bleak, pre-1984 world, where one of the greatest flavors of ice cream simply didn't exist! Follow Ben & Jerry's Instagram for amazing recipes (cookie cup sundaes!) the latest ice cream innovations (ice cream burritos!).
It's no secret that we love Momofuku Milk Bar's epic dessert menu, but their soft serves really take it to the next level. How good is it? Their "cereal milk soft serve" has achieved cult-like status thanks to its devoted followers. Get the behind-the-scenes scoop from Master Chef judge Christina Tosi and her team on the Milk Bar's Instagram.
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You can taste the love in every bite of Sweet Rose Creamery's desserts. The sweet shop uses eggs produced from cage-free chickens, organic milk, and locally sourced ingredients to make their magical ice creams. Follow their always-updating Insta' for snaps of all those yummy ingredients before and after they're made into icy goodness.
Know for their hipster-pleasing flavors (goat cheese, marionberry, and habanero, anyone?), the L.A. and Portland based Salt and Straw delivers an up-close look at their creative culinary process as well as some of the finest #foodporn shots on Instagram.
10. @SweetRepublic
Sweet Republic's Instagram is full of all sort of hypnotizing images: a fudge ripple ice cream mountain stretching into the horizon, piles of donuts being swirled into ice cream, perfectly golden brown toasted marshmallow perched precariously on top of sundaes. It's enough to make every day a cheat day.
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11. @BigGayIceCream
When the menu includes a Bea Arthur and a Salty Pimp, you know you're in for a treat! Old school soft serve gets a bright and shiny makeover in the loving hands of the Big Gay Ice Cream team. Followers of their Instagram are treated to sassy memes alongside their latest mouth-watering concoctions—hello, Trix milkshake!
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12. @AmpleHills
Dessert makers are a romantic lot. There's a certain poetry to creating the perfect ice cream cone and the folks at Ample Hills are definitely up for the challenge. In fact, the name "Ample Hills" is a reference to the Walt Whitman poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry." Follow them on Instagram for double tap-worthy treats.
If you can't make it to Brooklyn, Ample Hills still has you covered. They ship to satisfy nationwide sweet teeth via Gold Bely. Can it get any better than that? The answer is yes. They offer free shipping!
13. @Talenti
With a tagline like "A vacation for your mouth," you know you're in for some good gelato. Talenti lives up to that ice cream hubris with super-fresh ingredients (pure cane sugar, fresh-from-the-farm milk, Belgian chocolate) and super-delicious flavors. Follow them on Instagram for plenty of ice cream glamour shots to sink your teeth into.
