Five favorite Twin Cities ice cream flavors

Fro-yo will never replace ice cream, especially the Izzy scoop!

​This year's Best Ice Cream Flavor, Sebastian Joe's Nicollet Avenue Pothole, is not for everyone. Its mix of dark chocolate ice cream, fudge, truffles, chunks of Heath bar, and sea salt is pretty intense--proving that an ice cream might actually be too rich!

Still, sometimes lo-cal frozen yogurt isn't going to cut it. Here are five of our favorite local scoops to celebrate the last of the hot weather:

Crema's dizzying selection of ice creams...

​
Crema's Olive Oil
Did you hear that Crema was serving pesto ice cream?! We didn't get a chance to sample the blend of Parmigiano-reggiano, basil, pine nuts, and olive oil, though we are intrigued because we're big fans of the cafe's rich, creamy Olive Oil flavor. If that's just too weird for you, you can always stick with the shop's signature coffee-flavored Crema.

Izzy's Salted Caramel
Izzy's was an early adopter of salted caramel, jumping on the savory-sweet before it was trendy. Check Izzy's real-time-updated flavor array to see if it's in the case!

Grand Ole Creamery Birthday Cake
Random days can be your birthday at St. Paul's favorite old-time ice cream shop, Grand Ole Creamery, when you pick a scoop of Birthday Cake. The ice cream tastes like batter, and it's studded with actual bits of angel food cake.

Pumphouse Creamery's Buckwheat Honey
A relative newcomer, Pumphouse Creamery has now been around long enough (it opened in 2003) to see two of its original employees who met at the shop get engaged--congratulations Nick and Jill! Pumphouse has become a south Minneapolis mainstay due to its commitment to the finest local ingredients, including a flavor made with locally gathered single-source Buckwheat Honey. If you like the honey ice cream at the State Fair, this one's darker, and more molasses-y.

Sebastian Joe's Oreo
Don't let a summer go by without a scoop of this cookie classic. Or even better, eat yours in the form of a dark-chocolate-dipped Brr Bar.