Best Ice Cream of 2022 in The Smokies
Are you screaming for ice cream? We’ve got you covered with so many ice cream opportunities in the Great Smoky Mountains with unique treats and flavors, along with classic parlor shops too.
Next Add Nitrogen
Dulce Nitrogen- Ice Cream & Bubble Tea reopened in May after two years. Dulce makes ice cream using nitrogen and serves it in unique ways such as with a bubble waffle or get it in a brownie bowl or as a banana split. Pair your ice cream with a bubble tea or a milk tea or milk coffee.
Find Dulce at 2656 Parkway Suite 3 in Pigeon Forge.
Mad Dog’s Creamery & Donuts calls itself your one-stop sweet shop with hand-dipped premium ice cream, soft-serve ice cream, sundaes, banana splits, milkshakes, and funnel cakes (oh delicious fried dough!). Oh, and let’s not forget the doughnuts – added to the menu in 2016.
With Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg locations, Mad Dog’s motto is “Unleash the Sweet.” And does it ever.
Along with traditional – but also delicious – vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, Mad Dog’s offers unique hand-dipped ice cream flavors including Yellow Brick Road, White Chocolate Raspberry, Orange Pineapple, Strawberry Cheesecake and Sea Salt Caramel Cheesecake.
Unique Treats
Ice cream flavors aren’t the only unique treats. Among, Mad Dog’s fun creations are an ice cream stuffed cotton candy burrito, a banana pudding funnel cake and ice cream on a cloud – ice cream on cotton candy served in a cone. What fun! Visitors also will find soft, fluffy doughnuts, and you know the offerings are anything but ordinary. Maple bacon, dreamcicle, banana pudding, chocolate chip cake are among the flavors.
Have your 4-legged best friend with you? Mad Dog’s has doggie treats and toys for them too. You can sit outside with your dog where there are picnic tables and water bowls. Their treats come in ice cream and doughnut form as well.
Find Mad Dog’s at two locations:
3048 Parkway, Pigeon Forge and 731 East Parkway, Gatlinburg
Maddi Mae’s Café & Creamery (previously The Village Café & Creamery) offers soft serve, hand-dipped and rolled ice cream in lots of fun flavors with topping offerings and lots of ways to eat it.
Get a milkshake in a traditional flavor or try an espresso shake, a chair latte shake or a pumpkin spiced shake.
Maddi Mae’s Cafe
Maddi Mae’s Café – locally famous in Athens, Tennessee – bought The Village Café & Creamery in July 2021. Also is 2021, Maddi Mae’s Café & Creamery partnered with Appalachian Bear Rescue in Townsend. A portion of all sales go to the Appalachian Bear Rescue helping orphaned cubs get back to the wild. Appalachian Bear Rescue is a non-contact rehabilitation center that allows the cubs to grow with no human contact which allows the bears to return to the wild.
Find Maddi Mae’s in The Village Shoppes at 634 Parkway Suite #17 in Gatlinburg.
The Old Mill Creamery
Located in Pigeon Forge’s Old Mill – an actual working grist mill –The Old Mill Creamery “makes ice cream the old-fashioned way, churning rich custard to scoop into bowls or sugar cones, whirl into thick shakes, or sculpt into eye-popping sundaes.”
The shop adds treats from The Old Mill Candy Kitchen, the bakery, spirits from the Old Forge Distillery and fresh fruits and nuts to create interesting and tasty ice creams. Among its signature flavors are Whiskey Ribbon, Salted Caramel, Vanilla Bean, Banana Pudding and Oat Mill Cream Pie.
The Old Mill Creamery will serve you a Sundae Bowl that you design, and it comes in a handmade keepsake bowl from Pigeon River Pottery Company.
The Old Mill is a nationally recognized Historical Site and is located on the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River in the heart of Pigeon Forge. It was the heart of the community and served as a gathering spot for villagers. During the Civil War, looms were set up on the second floor to make woven articles for soldiers. Then, the area around the Old Mill was first settled by pioneers near a river in the early 1800s.
Little Pigeon River
The river was named Little Pigeon because of its popularity with pigeons, and the name was given to the community as well. William Love dammed up the Little Pigeon River and began construction of the first building of the Old Mill. He utilized 40-foot-long, 14″-by-14″ Yellow Poplar logs, which are clearly visible even today. Huge river rocks serve as pillars to support the structure. The Mill has been in continuous daily operation since its completion in 1830, and consequently this is one of the most photographed structures in Tennessee.
Read more about The Old Mill and Pigeon’s Forge’s history in our blog post. Find The Old Mill at 171 Old Mill Ave, Pigeon Forge, (865) 453-4301.
Curl de la Crème
Customize your own creation at this Pigeon Forge eatery and the curlers will make it beautiful and almost too pretty to eat – almost.
Visitors choose an ice cream flavor – vanilla, chocolate, mint, and also vegan vanilla, vegan chocolate and sugar-free vanilla or chocolate. Then, each order is turned from liquid cream to ice cream as you watch. Choose from a selection of cookies, fruits, cereal, and nut-based pastes to mix in. Fruity Pebbles, peanut butter, Nutella, pecan pie, cherries, coffee and many more to mix in and add on top of the final creation.
The ice cream curls are placed beautifully in a cup, waffle bowl, waffle taco or between 2 Krispy Kreme doughnuts!
The sister owned and founded business, Curl de la Crème shares its seasonal creations on Facebook and Instagram.
Find Curl de la Crème at 2656 Parkway, Suite 6, Pigeon Forge.
Homemade Ice Cream
Island Creamery is a great place for homemade ice cream and gourmet sweet treats. Try your ice cream in a hand-dipped chocolate waffle cone and then walk around The Island enjoying the fun, the shops, the Ferris wheel! For more about The Island, check out our blog post.
Scoops Ice Cream Parlor offers homemade ice cream with many different flavors to choose. Try a creamcicle freeze with homemade orange sherbet. Or maybe cotton candy, sea sale caramel truffle or back cheery vanilla!
Create unique flavors and treats for holidays. They also will make an ice cream cake for a special occasion and a special message.
Find Scoops at 3060 Teaster Lane in Pigeon Forge.
The Apple Valley Creamery in Sevierville is an old-fashioned ice cream parlor and bakery that makes about 60 different ice cream flavors and made from scratch baked goods. The shop, and adjoining restaurant and store, are just off a main road but they feel a million miles away. In business since 1991, Apple Valley Creamery will turn your ice cream choice into a banana split, malt or an ice cream float, and you can top your homemade fruit cobbler with ice cream too!
Read all about The Apple Barn in our blog post.
Find Apple Valley Creamery at 230 Apple Valley Rd., Sevierville.
Watch Your Mouth!
Cussin’ Custard is a unique shop with a unique name.
Tammy and Doug opened Cussin’ Custard in Pigeon Forge in 2021 just 3 months after they married.
The shop offers what they call Concretes, you start with either vanilla or chocolate custard and then blend it with toppings or syrup. There are some pre-designed concretes such as Oreo, caramel, fudge and chocolate, chocolate chip, cookie dough or create your own.
Sevier Shakes (Get it? Sevier County) “are not for the faint of heart.” The Fiddlestick Brownie Supreme has a frosted cup rim with cream cheese icing and chocolate chips with fudge brownie, frosted cake doughnut, bite-sized brownies, mini chocolate doughnuts, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, chocolate sprinkles and a cherry!
“And the name? Cussin’ Custard came from a planning session when Tammy and Doug were sitting around the kitchen table with family eating custard and brainstorming, “Tammy took another bite of her custard and said, “Son of a Gun, this is so stinkin good!” Her son, jumping on her comment, said, “that’s it mom! That’s your name, Cussin’ Custard!” The hope is that everyone who eats custard from Cussin’ Custard will have the same reaction as Tammy, ‘so stinkin good!’”
Located at 3535 Parkway in Pigeon Forge.
Cruze Farm Ice Cream
Similarly, Cruze Farm is a family dairy farm in Knoxville with several restaurants and ice cream parlors in the state including a recently opened ice-cream shop in Sevierville.
The family milks Jersey cows and make fresh churned ice cream with milk from its herd. “Our cows are on pasture 365 days a year and are never given hormones.”
Checking today’s flavors, which you can do here, my mouth is watering for brown butter, butterscotch, sweet cream, brownie batter, peach, cheesecake, Nutella, cookies & cream and good ol’ chocolate ice cream.
Find Cruze at 1642 Parkway in Sevierville
Book Your Stay
Ready to get to the Mountains? You’ll need a place to stay!
Whether it’s your first visit to the Smokies or your fiftieth, American Patriot Getaways has a cabin for you. From studio-style economy cabins to 13-bedroom palatial chalets, any family or group can be accommodated in our cabins. There are movie theater cabins, cabins with swimming pools, secluded cabins, cabins with multiple kitchens and cabins with game rooms.
Book a cabin close to the Parkway and you won’t miss any Gatlinburg fun.
Book online using our website. Or give our friendly Reservation staff a call at (800) 204-5169 to get started planning your trip to the Great Smoky Mountains.
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