Celebrating National Ice Cream Day!

National Ice Cream Day is coming up on July 16th. Here are some fun and creative ways you can celebrate your love for ice cream!

What is your favorite treat? I can confidently say that ice cream is my go-to dessert! There’s just something about eating a creamy, cool bowl of ice cream on a hot day.

And lucky for me, I’m not the only one who feels that way. People love it so much that it has 2 different holidays!! There’s National Ice Cream Day on the third Sunday of every July and Ice Cream Day is December 13th. Crazy right?!

I’ll take any reason to eat more ice cream! And I’m sure you would too. So, if you’re wanting to celebrate National Ice Cream Day this year, try one of these fun activities!

Activities for National Ice Cream Day

Make Your Own Ice Cream Bar

Why not share this fun occasion with friends by having an ice cream party? Of course, you’ll want to serve ice cream with tons of fun add ins and toppings. A great way to do this is by setting up an ice cream bar.

This way, your friends can all come through the line and create their own special ice cream sundae. After you’ve all made your bowl, you can talk about your favorite flavors to eat and what toppings you added.

Here are some easy tips and ideas for setting up an ice cream bar:

Make an Ice Cream Charcuterie Board
Serve Toppings in a Muffin Tin
Pre-scoop your ice cream the night before
Have a variety of containers for the ice cream – plastic bowl, waffle cone, wafer cone, etc.
Make sure to provide lots of napkins
Offer 1-5 ice cream flavors. Generally you don’t need more.

2. Visit A Local Ice Cream Truck

I remember a time as a teenager when I went to the beach with friends and we ran to catch up with an ice cream truck haha. I feel like nowadays you don’t really see ice cream trucks too often, but you could always check your Google maps to see if there’s one nearby. And if there isn’t one, you could always opt for a nearby ice cream shop.

Regardless, ice cream trucks are so fun! Stopping at one will not just result in yummy ice cream to eat, but also help support one of your local businesses.

3. Make Homemade Ice Cream

If you have young kids, you might want to do this activity but also have pre made ice cream they can eat. Since ice cream takes a while to freeze, it will be a bit before the homemade stuff can be eaten.

One thing that is nice, is that there are more options now for making ice cream at home. Companies such as Cuisinart and Ninja have made ice cream makers that are much quicker and easier to use than ones in the past!

Additionally, not all homemade ice cream recipes require that you use an actual machine. As long as you have a good blender/food processor or are willing to shake for a long time, you should be fine.

4. Find a Unique Flavor to Try

Recently I got to try Lavender Honey flavored ice cream. It was different than anything I’ve ever had before. It had an earthy floral taste that was vibrant and refreshing. This experience was a great reminder to me that the possibilities are endless when it comes to flavor combinations!

I mean, I’ve even heard of people trying ice cream flavors like ranch, chicken, and dill pickle! I’ll admit, those are probably beyond my scope. I still want to enjoy my ice cream haha, but you get the point.

So whether to try something new at a local store like I did, or make your own one-of-a-kind flavor, it can be a lot of fun to be adventurous with ice cream.

5. Create a Dessert Using Ice Cream

There are all kinds of desserts that you can make using ice cream. To name a few, you could make ice cream cake, ice cream sandwiches, and even have it with some warm pie or cobbler.

Another option is to make a dessert that LOOKS like ice cream. Here are a few examples.

6. Learn About the History of Ice Cream

Fun Fact: It is believed that the very first version of ice cream was created in China nearly 700 BC. Isn’t that crazy?! And over time, it spread to places like Italy and the US, until it became a global treat.

If you liked that little fact, you should check out this ice cream article. It gives even more details about the history of ice cream and creation of National Ice Cream Day!

7. Play Ice Cream Related Games

There are a surprising number of games that you can play with ice cream.

A popular one is a blindfolded taste test! One time my friends and I did that by getting a few of the Handel’s 4 scoop samplers, and it was so much fun!! 10/10 recommend; however, I also understand if you don’t want to go out and get a bunch of flavors. In that case, you could try one of these other games.

Along with eating ice cream, you can also do games about ice cream such as a word search, bingo, or mad libs.

8. Make an Ice Cream Craft

Crafts are a great summer activity for entertaining kids. Try out one of these simple ice cream themed crafts for your National Ice Cream Day celebrations!

9. Have an Ice Cream Dessert Dump

A recent trend on Tik Tok was these things called “dump dinners”. Essentially, people would made something like spaghetti for dinner and then just dump it in the middle of their table for everyone to eat from.

Because they have become so popular, I figure you could do something similar with ice cream.

Most of the time people will lay down a plastic cover first. But since ice cream melts, you might even want to just make a huge sundae with various flavors and toppings on a large platter that you can set in the center for people to share.

Hopefully these ideas help you and your family enjoy National Ice Cream Day to the fullest! Leave a comment with your favorite way to eat ice cream. Mine is either while cuddled up on the couch watching a movie or sitting on the side of a pool in the summer.