15 Delicious Fall Ice Cream Flavors That Aren't Pumpkin Spice

Don't get me wrong, I love a good pumpkin spice latte. There's nothing better than cold hands clutched around a warm ceramic mug, amber leaves dancing in the crisp autumn breeze, cozy flannel buttoned up to your chin, and the "Gilmore Girls" theme song playing on repeat in your head. However, we can all agree that pumpkin spice is unavoidable the second Target decides to put out Halloween costumes, and it can get redundant, especially when it comes to desserts. 

As a recipe designer and chef, I'm always looking for unique flavors and pairings. Whether you're creating a seasonal menu at a five-star restaurant or planning a weeknight dinner for the family, it's nice to add a little adventure and whimsy to your standard go-tos. Without reaching too far outside of anyone's comfort zone, it is lovely to enjoy all the comforting flavors that this cozy and colorful season has to offer. 

Although ice cream cones are typically reserved for the warmer months, that doesn't mean you should forego a scoop on top of your warm apple pie or nestled on a toasty almond and cranberry crisp. Instead of reaching for vanilla or pumpkin spice, let's explore some alternative ice cream flavors. Make your own no-churn ice cream at home, or search for these festive flavors in stores near you.

Although cinnamon is a star player in any pumpkin spice blend, it carries quite a unique flavor solo. It's ultra warming and mildly spicy, which contrasts the creamy density of ice cream. If you're making your own cinnamon ice cream, simply mix ground cinnamon into the recipe — easy peasy. You'll also find cinnamon and cinnamon roll ice cream in the freezer aisle of your grocery store, both of which fit our fall-time theme and can be incredibly comforting and satisfying.

Pair cinnamon ice cream with warm apple desserts, pumpkin pie, cinnamon buns, or baked pear treats. Grilled stone fruit is another appropriate pairing. If you enjoy the heat of the cinnamon, consider adding a bit of chili powder as well to spice things up. Top your scoops with caramel sauce, chocolate fudge, fresh apples or pears, or toasted pecans. You can even add a cinnamon stick for aesthetic and aromatic appeal.

As a born and raised Vermonter, I'm quite used to heading down to the local scoop shop and enjoying creemees with my friends. If you've never heard this term, that's because it's uniquely used by Vermonters to describe a soft-serve-like treat. It's more than just a flavor; creemees are a Vermont staple. While typically sugar is used to sweeten cream for ice cream, maple creemees also include maple syrup. It's usually mixed in fairly well, but you can also drizzle maple syrup on top of your ice cream for added sweetness. It will even thicken slightly like fudge does when it comes into contact with the icy treat.

Maple syrup pairs flawlessly with other fall flavors like apples, cinnamon, bourbon, toasted nuts, and even coffee. Use maple ice cream with pecan pie, apple crisp, and coffee or brown butter cake. It holds its own with rich flavor, and adds a wood-fired, smoky element to your desserts. 

Although cardamom is versatile and has floral, herbal, and spring-like elements. I like to use it in my fall recipes because it's both comforting and cozy. It has a eucalyptus or pine-like freshness that always reminds me that winter's approaching. It has a slight citrusy flair with layered complexity, though it's still subtle and understated in terms of its presentation. Because of this, cardamom ice cream makes for the perfect supporting actor for your fall-time dessert.

If you've never cooked with cardamom, I recommend buying pods. The flavor is fresher and superior to ground cardamom, and if it's the main flavor of your ice cream, then it's worth the extra work. Although plain cardamom ice cream is tricky — but not impossible — to find on the freezer shelves, you may find combination flavors like maple pecan cardamom or pistachio cardamom. Enjoy it with apples, pumpkin, pear, chocolate, fruits, and tea. I prefer cardamom ice cream with delicate baked goods like scones and shortbread.

Perhaps one of my favorite memories as a child is when our neighbors all got together, toting along our collection of wild apples from the woods around our houses, and squeezed the juice out with an old-fashioned apple press. That cider tasted like liquid gold, and to this day, I haven't found a superior beverage. Well, you can do more than just drink apple cider. You can use it to make donuts, mull it with spices, or use it in ice cream. Not only can you make cider yourself from the bounty you got from apple-picking weekend, but you can also find bottles of it in the grocery store. 

Salt & Straw has an apple series that can provide some inspiration. It's experimented with apples and classic baked good flavors that will have you craving a bowl of ice cream in 40-degree weather. Top your apple cider ice cream with a salted caramel drizzle and toasted almonds.

Fall often reminds us of warming spices and bready desserts, and apples overwhelmingly take the front seat in the fruit department. However, some fall berries and fruits like pomegranate tend to also appear, mainly in salads, meat dishes, and more. One of my favorite things about pomegranates is their crunchy inner seeds. They can be strained or included in a homemade no-churn pomegranate ice cream recipe.

To make your life easier, consider using pomegranate juice or frozen pomegranate seeds if you enjoy the crunch. This sweet and tangy ice cream should be used alongside mellow and warming desserts, like gingerbread or gingersnaps. Flavors like cardamom, or nuts like pistachio, pecans, and toasted almonds, help to balance the sweet tanginess. Chocolate desserts also often enjoy the freshness of fruit-based ice creams as a companion. This unique ice cream flavor is difficult to find in stores, but smaller brands and a few larger companies like Häagen-Dazs have dabbled in the flavor.

Sweet potatoes should be making a more frequent appearance in your desserts. Yes, they are sweet and that is a bonus, but their real value comes from their texture. Sweet potatoes are starchy, dense, and delicious, and will make your ice cream creamier than ever. It's a classic fall food that may appear on your Thanksgiving plate, and can make for an out-of-left-field-delicious fall ice cream flavor that should not be overlooked.

It's unfortunate that this flavor doesn't often grace stores with its presence, so you may have to make it from scratch. Luckily, there are plenty of at-home no-churn sweet potato ice cream recipes out there to enjoy. Don't you dare serve this with pumpkin pie. It deserves to be the star of the show, topped with candied pecans, caramel sauce, and toasted marshmallows. Enjoy this rich masterpiece decked to the hilt, and don't ever lose that recipe because it will be an instant favorite in your household. And hey, sneaking more vegetables into your diet is never a bad idea.

If you enjoy old-timey, rustic, smoky flavors, then saddle up for bourbon barrel ice cream. Yes, it's still sweet as can be, but has a rich caramel like undertone with a woody barrel finish. This flavor is not for everyone, but does have a unique and comforting flavor better suited for mature palates. For homemade bourbon barrel ice cream, you'll need to infuse your ice cream with a bourbon barrel cocktail mixer or include a small amount of reduced barrel aged bourbon in your recipe.

You may be able to find bourbon barrel ice cream at a specialty store, often mixed with nuts or other flavors. It can pair nicely with chocolate, pecans, dark cherries, caramel, warm apple, or pumpkin pie. Try doubling up on the bourbon flavor with a bourbon butter sauce — the boozy ice cream topping you never knew you needed. Use extra fat or egg yolks in your base to create an elevated fatty or dense mouthfeel. It's smoky, sweet, and sophisticated.

I am a huge fan of nuts in my ice cream. In fact, any chunks are well received on my end, as they break up the textural monotony that ice cream typically offers. Brown butter pecan ice cream contains layers of flavor, including nutty to ultra-sweet. Brown butter itself has a nutty undertone, dances with notes of toffee, and coats your mouth with a deep, fatty mouthfeel. Making brown butter pecan ice cream at home is a several-step process, as it's important to brown the butter and let it cool before adding it to the other ingredients. 

I would also recommend toasting the pecans to match that same ultra-nutty and smoky undertone. Luckily, butter pecan is a flavor carried by most grocery stores, made by popular brands like Talenti, Breyers, Hood, and Häagen-Dazs. Look for "brown butter pecan" over "butter pecan" for the most enjoyable dessert experience. Serve it with just about any pie or crisp, as well as any fruit or chocolate dessert.

On a breezy fall day when the leaves are starting to come loose and you've broken out the wool sweaters and L.L.Bean boots, there's nothing better than a hot cup of tea. It's comforting, soothing, and the sipping experience in itself is meditative. And what's the most comforting tea of all? Chamomile tea with just a lick of honey to elevate the sweet and smooth notes. Now, how about we turn that into ice cream?

I infuse the cream with loose-leaf tea. Once the flavor has fully steeped into the cream (which can be dairy- or coconut-based), strain and cool it before turning it into ice cream. You can replace some of the sugar in the recipe with honey and drizzle some on top as well. This is a fantastic flavor of ice cream to pair with cooked apple or pear dishes like pie or crisp, scones, shortbread, or any other delicate dessert. Lemon sweets, especially those using lemon zest, tend to elevate the flavors of the tea-infused ice cream.

The star sweet addition to just about any Thanksgiving dinner is cranberry sauce or cranberry chutney. So it's no surprise that cranberry ice cream has ended up on this list of delicious fall ice cream flavors that aren't pumpkin spice. Major brands tend not to carry cranberry ice cream, but around the holidays, there are plenty of smaller scoop shops producing this tart, sweet, crave-worthy ice cream flavor.

Make your own using cooked-down cranberries, or spring for a can of the sauce. My favorite fall-time cranberry ice cream topping is orange zest. It pairs beautifully with any citrus-based dessert, as well as tangy apple pie and breadier desserts like pound cake or cinnamon buns. Because of its tart notes, it tends to be fairly intense, and does best next to a dessert that won't fight it for the spotlight. Be sure to include plenty of sugar to balance the powerful notes of cranberry, and leave a few fruit chunks in there for bright pink bursts of flavor. A topping of toasted nuts helps to mellow the tart berries and create balance.

Did you know that molasses is a byproduct of making sugar from sugar cane and beets? It's thick, dark, and flavorful. Molasses is what gives brown sugar that unique caramel-like burnt flavor we love so much. There are three different types of molasses, which vary in intensity, and all three can be used to make ice cream. Blackstrap is the most bitter and intense as a result of being ultra-concentrated.

Because of its intensity, it's best to use very little in your ice cream. I recommend balancing it with brown or white sugar so you're not using solely blackstrap molasses. Its flavoring is smoky, earthy, sweet, with some bitter notes, so it's best paired with uber-sweet desserts. Use blackstrap molasses ice cream in any capacity you'd use caramel, but understand it has a much more unique flavor that might not be as universally accepted. Serve blackstrap molasses ice cream alongside your pumpkin and apple pies on Thanksgiving day.

The world has fallen in love with Nutella, but forgotten about the incredible flavor of hazelnut when not accompanied by chocolate. It's time you give it a try in the form of ice cream. Now, it's important to roast the hazelnuts before grinding them into a smooth butter and adding them to your ice cream, as toasting them will add density and creaminess to your recipe. Toasting the nuts will bring out the flavor, allowing them to reach their full potential.

However, you don't have to make hazelnut ice cream from scratch unless you want to. It's more common in grocery stores than some of the other flavors on this list. Of course, you can use this warming and nutty hazelnut ice cream alongside chocolate or garnish it with a chocolate drizzle, but it's also quite pleasing with vanilla baked goods, anything containing cinnamon (like cinnamon rolls), recipes that use almond flour, and, of course, any pie or crisp. Toasted hazelnut ice cream works especially well with crisps, especially if you're using nuts in the crumble, which I highly recommend.

I love caramel, and it's a fall-time classic. Though butterscotch may have it beat. Butterscotch and caramel differ slightly. Butterscotch is more intense in flavor, with stronger burnt-toffee and molasses-like undertones. So, if you're a caramel fan, you'll likely enjoy its bolder cousin in your ice cream. Now, if you're making this recipe from scratch,  you'll have to start by making your own butterscotch, so it is quite the process from start to finish. You can buy butterscotch and incorporate it into your vanilla ice cream recipe as well by mixing it in smoothly or folding it to create ribbons of flavor. This will save you time, but creating something completely from scratch is so satisfying (and your home will smell amazing afterward).

It's a fairly accessible flavor, even Breyers carries a version of it. It is the ultimate sweet and creamy ice cream flavor to top your classic fall desserts. If there is any apple dessert in sight, you better be springing for a pint of butterscotch ice cream. No, it's not just the candy that your grandmother seems to have an endless supply of in her purse. It's a flavor that should make a comeback, as it's essentially a more flavorful version of caramel. It's cozy and comforting, which is the perfect flavor to enjoy on a crisp autumn day.

My favorite tea, by far, is Earl Grey. And not just because of the floral and slightly citrusy notes, but because it can be used in dessert making. Its flavor is complex, as are its hazy origins. Earl Grey desserts combined the familiar and comforting elements of tea with the satisfaction of a sweet treat, so why not infuse that same flavor into your ice cream?

Hot tea drinkers love the fall, and most everyone loves dessert, so it's worth killing two birds with one stone. Pair your Earl Grey ice cream with cookies, scones, or tea cakes. Essentially, if you'd serve it with tea, then you're safe to serve it with tea-flavored ice cream. It can elevate citrus desserts specifically, or desserts with citrus ingredients, honey-sweetened desserts, dark berry desserts, and desserts featuring nuts. All in all, an Earl Grey infusion is a unique and sophisticated way to bring tea time even closer to dessert.