A scoop of vanilla ice cream is very nice, but there’s plenty of scope for ice cream to get a lot more interesting. We’re talking colourful, Willy Wonka–style creations, ice cream with savoury ingredients folded through and flavours you're more likely to find on dinner plates than in cones. To celebrate World Ice Cream Day (20 July), we've hunted down the most outrageous ice cream flavours on the planet, counting down to the weirdest of all. 

Click or scroll through our gallery to discover the strangest ice cream flavours the world has to offer. Which ones would you try?

This quirky spot uses liquid nitrogen in its production process, resulting in seriously rich, wonderfully creamy and impressively dense ice cream. The indulgence doesn’t stop there, either. Among an array of decadent flavours, Mister Artisan's fan-favourite crème brûlée ice cream comes complete with a crackly layer of burnished torched sugar. It’s up to you whether you enjoy it by the scoop, by the pint or in an ice cream sandwich.

Portland-based Fifty Licks is known for its unconventional, experimental flavours, though never for gimmicks – these creations are all about the taste. An enduring favourite here is the mango sticky rice flavour, featuring a jasmine rice and coconut milk ice cream base swirled through with Alphonso mango. Other unusual varieties include cornbread ice cream, which comes with chunks of cornbread and a drizzle of honey butter.

This trendy parlour, which has locations in Marin, California and Seattle, Washington, is fully vegan and gluten-free, and it's home to an array of tasty flavours. Its most unique – and surprisingly delicious – offering is called California Cabin. Inspired by cosy getaways, its creamy coconut and oat milk base is infused with smoked vanilla and pine, and it has chewy black pepper and cardamom shortbread mixed through. It’s strong and peppery, and it's guaranteed to transport your taste buds to a mountain cabin in the depths of the Golden State.

When summer rolls around, Max and Mina's starts cranking out corn-based ice cream. But it doesn't settle for plain ol' corn on the cob flavour. At Max and Mina's, corn is put into every conceivable cone. There's salted caramel corn, butter corn, pickled corn and chilli lime corn. And that's before it adds corn to cookies 'n' cream and blueberry loaf cakes, as well as mixing it with dates, figs, cashews and peanut butter to make another tasty bake. It's a cornucopia of corn-based goods – and customers look forward to it every year.

Baskin-Robbins hoped to become a permanent fixture at Thanksgiving when it released its Brie My Guest ice cream in November 2024. The idea was that this ice cream, which mixed Brie and burrata with swirls of almonds, pistachios and apricots, could replace the usual holiday cheeseboard. It could potentially pair well with the brand's Turkey Cake offering – the ice cream equivalent (in shape and flavour) of a turkey dinner.

Inspired by Persian ingredients, Mashti Malone’s Ice Cream serves up an exciting mix of fresh, herby flavours. Popular options include French lavender, ginger rosewater and date, but none are perhaps as refreshing (or as unusual) as Persian cucumber. This pastel green variety is subtle and light, but ever so delicious. 

Vegan pop-up ice creamery Sassi Ice Cream can be found at various festivals and events across Adelaide. The Sassi team has amassed a following for its unique vegan offerings, and it's known for recreating traditional Middle Eastern recipes; its ice creams are intended to evoke the feeling of wandering through a Middle Eastern bazaar. Among all the creamy, dreamy, richly spiced combinations, the sage and pomegranate swirl flavour is particularly popular.

Cute ice cream and sweet shop Mary’s Milk Bar is loved for its delicious gelato, offering flavours ranging from the traditional to the truly innovative. Each ice cream is made by hand that morning, and flavours don’t just change by the season, but by the day. There’s always something interesting on offer here, from goats’ cheese and fig ice cream to smoked paprika and peanut butter ice cream – but the spot's spicy-sweet cumin and mango ripple ice cream might just be the tastiest.

The menu at il laboratorio del gelato looks like a paint colour chart – there are so many vivid and unusual creations on offer. The visionary shop opened in 2002 and has been committed to whipping up unique frozen treats ever since. If you’re looking for an ice cream that's a little unusual, top picks include pumpkin, Cheddar cheese, and tarragon flavours. The tarragon scoop is a pastel-coloured number that brings warm, delicate aniseed notes to the party. It's definitely worth sampling when it's in rotation.

All the gelato flavours at Black Dog Gelato start with a base that's flavoured and matured for 24 hours before being delivered to the store. Then, the only gelato that the shop spins that day gets sold to its happy customers. The joint sells all the flavours you'd expect, but one of its bestsellers is the unusual-sounding goat cheese cashew caramel flavour – a goats' cheese gelato layered with house-made caramel and toasted cashews.

Magnolia Ice Cream has been making ice cream since 1925, whipping up an array of frozen treats that offer a taste of nostalgia to its legions of fans in the Philippines. Halo-halo, inspired by the beloved dessert of the same name, is one of its bestselling flavours, featuring a rich, refreshing mix of condensed milk, tropical fruits and sweetened red beans. The brand has gone global; these days, you can find tubs of Magnolia ice cream in many Asian supermarkets across North America.

Ice cream lovers are spoilt for choice at Heladería Coromoto, a frozen treat spot in Venezuela. This must-visit parlour is supposedly home to the world’s largest ice cream menu, with approximately 900 options in its ever-expanding collection. As you’d expect, there are plenty of outlandish flavours here, including avocado, trout and hot dog. One that’s caused a stir most recently is its cheesy Doritos flavour, which comes topped with shards of the popular corn chip.

Cape Town’s Tapi Tapi is all about revolutionising traditional ice cream flavours. The brainchild of Tapiwa Guzha, who first arrived in the city as a student from Zimbabwe, this parlour is nothing short of spectacular, with creations that reflect Africa’s culinary heritage and incorporate unique ingredients. Among the array of complex flavours, you’ll find options such as edible clay and biscuits, and rooibos tea and imphepho (a South African plant similar to sage) smoke.

Jeni's, which has shops across the US, has released more than its share of insanely good ice cream flavours. This includes buttercream birthday cake, which comes complete with chunks of sponge, frosting and rainbow sprinkles. But the Everything Bagel flavour perhaps beats the lot, bringing us bagel ‘gravel’ (sesame, poppy seeds, onions and garlic), schmeared through subtly sweet cream cheese ice cream. It often returns for limited-edition runs and sells like hotcakes.

Der Verruckte Eismacher – The Crazy Ice Cream Maker – is an experiential ice cream shop in Munich with a taste for fun. Founder Matthias Münz can often be found serving up scoops dressed in a top hat, bow tie and red coat. The Margherita pizza flavour (complete with mozzarella and tomatoes) is a firm favourite with fans. One of the other madcap creations is called MiMiMi, because its ingredients include the unlikely combo of mineral water, mint and mussels.

Think ham doesn't go with ice cream? Think again. Windy Brow Farms has taken a New Jersey classic – Taylor Ham, or pork roll – and incorporated it into a sweet treat. To make this limited-edition favourite, the processed pork is mixed with cinnamon and sugar, then swirled into sweet maple ice cream. This brunch-inspired flavour has been a crowd-pleaser since the fruit farm released it as part of its Only in Jersey range, which originally also included sweetcorn and honey, and tomato pie flavours.

Tomato is a favoured ingredient at The Creole Creamery, which has three locations in Louisiana and one in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. The Creole tomato sorbet – a sweet but tangy flavour that makes the most of locally grown produce – is a seasonal staple. Other tomato-infused concoctions have included Alotta Burrata, a cheese-based scoop swirled with strawberry-tomato jam (pictured).

Van Leeuwen is renowned for its collabs, bringing fans wacky-flavoured tubs that sell for a few weeks only. Previous flavours included a Kraft macaroni and cheese ice cream, a mystery flavour for Netflix’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and, most recently, an espresso ice cream inspired by Sabrina Carpenter's hit song of the same name. But Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream, based on the creamy salad dressing, was perhaps the brand's weirdest flavour to date. Most tubs are short-lived launches, but the buttermilk berry cornbread flavour and the praline butter cake flavour made their way onto the permanent menu.

Salt & Straw is known for its kooky ice cream creations, and its most innovative and unusual offerings crop up as part of its annual Thanksgiving series. The flavours vary a little each year, but 2023’s ‘dinner’ selection included a turkey stuffing and cranberry sauce flavour, a Parker House roll and salted buttercream flavour⁠, a cheesy potato casserole flavour and a vegan pumpkin and gingersnap pie flavour. The small chain mainly has shops on the West Coast, but there are also a few in Florida.

In 2018, Ireland’s Gelati Ice Cream captured public attention when it launched a limited-edition Heinz Tomato Ketchup flavour ice cream in honour of an Ed Sheeran concert (the musician’s love of the condiment is well known). While the tangy, tomatoey ice cream flavour didn’t last, it put Gelati firmly in the spotlight. The brand has a reputation for constantly coming up with new flavours, including mayonnaise, every chocolate bar you can think of, and an odd barbecue sauce number.

It sounds outrageous and, well, it is. But Cheat-Ohs – soft-serve ice cream rolled in crushed Cheetos – is a regular fixture on the specials board at Big Gay Ice Cream, which has three locations in New York City. The cheese puff creation understandably proved a huge social media hit when it first appeared a few years ago. Its frequent return is testament to the fact that the combination of sweet and salty is actually rather delicious.

Filipino cuisine is characterised by its mastery of sweet and salty combinations, and Manila-based artisan ice cream shop Sebastian’s Ice Cream sells some of the most unique mixes we’ve come across. That includes an ube and queso flavour (a blended mix of purple yam and cheese) and a really rather unusual champorado and dilis flavour (pictured). It's a chocolate pudding ice cream topped with salty, crunchy candied anchovies.

Proudly calling itself ‘Europe’s first liquid nitrogen ice cream parlour’, Chin Chin Labs does ice cream very differently. The team hand churns its frozen flavours with liquid nitrogen, and the result is truly remarkable. Its most unusual flavour to date was potato peel soft serve, which came finished with a potato peel glaze and salty French fries. The salty-sweet hybrid proved incredibly popular, especially among those who love dipping fries into creamy milkshakes.

The motto at Red Circle Ice Cream is 'eat ice cream, live happy' – and that sounds like an excellent motto to us! The joint has been serving handcrafted ice cream in the heart of Houston since 2017, and it prides itself on creating a rotating menu of hundreds of different flavours. Some of the most 'different' include riffs on durian and pandan ice cream, as well as a crawfish flavour. It's usually only on the menu for a limited time, so catch it while you can.

Despite its name, Ben & Bill's Chocolate Emporium is most famous for its lobster ice cream. Yep, this spot has been serving scoops studded with one of New England's most adored seafood delicacies since 1988. If you're not in the mood to sample the delight that is chunks of lobster folded into butter-infused ice cream, you could always try bubble gum ice cream, root beer ice cream or the shop's range of coffee flavours. There’s a second location at Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard.

Graeter’s Ice Cream has been perfecting its ice cream recipe since it was established in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1870. So, there was hardly a better candidate when it came to producing an ice cream based on another Cincinnati institution, Skyline Chili. To create this unusual flavour, Graeter's combined the signature Skyline spice with crunchy oyster crackers, swirling the result through its handcrafted French Pot ice cream to deliver a spoonful unlike anything else. Adding grated cheese on top is entirely optional.

Anya Hindmarch is best known for her fashion accessories; however, every summer since 2022, she's curated a wildly popular ice cream pop-up in London. Called The Ice Cream Project, the store serves up cone after cone of weird flavours inspired by Hindmarch's favourite store cupboard staples – think pesto and malt vinegar flavours. The most eye-catching ice cream of all has to be the Heinz Baked Beanz flavour, though. The shop says it's 'rich, sweet and brimming with protein'.

Much-lauded Michelin-star restaurant Labyrinth, which specialises in modern Singaporean cooking, serves one of the country’s most-loved savoury dishes in frozen dessert form. Its chilli crab ice cream features a beguiling mix of soft-shell crab and coconut that not only gets customers talking, but ranks as one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes.

High-end French ice cream manufacturer Philippe Faur is known for its long list of flavours, ranging from the classic to the truly eccentric. In 2002, the company debuted a savoury selection to be sold on rotation along with its more traditional treats. There are luxury flavours galore on that list, including a caviar option made from white sturgeon caviar. The experts at Philippe Faur advise serving it with smoked salmon, scallops or a baked potato for the ultimate high-low combo.

Now a cult classic in Germany, spaghettieis was invented in the late 1960s. The novelty sundae, which looks like a plate of pasta, was the brainchild of the son of an Italian immigrant who ran a gelato parlour in Mannheim, and it consists of strands of vanilla ice cream swimming in a bright-red strawberry sauce (a nod to tomato-based pasta sauce). It comes topped with white chocolate shavings, intended to resemble Parmesan.

In early 2025, Kellanova teamed up with Golden West Food Group to deliver a collaboration nobody knew they needed: Eggo ice cream. The ice cream came in three delicious-sounding flavours – buttery maple, chocolatey chip and blueberry – and could be purchased in pints or as ice cream sandwiches (squished between brown butter waffle cookies). The frozen treats went on sale in Kroger, Albertson’s and Walmart in the US.

London-based company Lick Me I’m Delicious is known for creating experimental food installations and weird and wonderful gadgets, including a nitro ice cream parlour. The portable nitro food lab was designed to concoct crazy-tasting treats on the go; think wasabi and honey ice cream. However, its most impressive creation has to be a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish ice cream, made from jellyfish proteins. It lit up when licked and, understandably, it went viral when it launched back in 2013.

Now discover the world’s most unusual crisp flavours

Last updated by Lottie Woodrow.