BALTIMORE — Most people visit Baltimore’s Federal Hill neighborhood for its bars and restaurants but those with a sweet tooth might want to go take a trip to check out its many ice cream shops as well.
The first stop on WMAR-2 News’ Baltimore ice cream tasting trail is The Charmery.
The Charmery not only offers the classics, chocolate vanilla, and strawberry but customers also will find several familiar flavors unexpected in their ice cream.
The Charmery co-owner Laura Alima said “every time you come to The Charmery you’ll be able to experiment with something different. Like right now, we have a lemon pepper ice cream and we always have amazing dairy free flavors.”
Alima revealed one of their most unique creations is based on a kid-favorite with a twist.
“One of our favorites is Saturday Morning Cartoons which is just like an ode to sitting around on Saturday morning eating cereal. You know sugar cereals, which has like Lucky Charm marshmallows, Frosted Flake base that’s just a really fun favorite that everyone loves,” Alima said.
Next up on our Fed Hill ice cream tour is Bmore Licks. Co-owner Kim Maloni tempts ice cream lovers with soft serve, milkshakes, traditional hand-scooped, and vegan options. the shop also offers frozen treats for our four-legged friends.
“We try to have a good balance of traditional flavors. Like if you love cookies and cream like my dad who’s been eating that for 50 years, or you like mint chocolate chip, you’ll always find something like that here. But, if you want something fun and exciting we also carry lots of seasonal options and new and exciting flavors that we’re testing out,” Maloni said.
Maloni showed off Bmore licks expansive menu featuring 40 hard scoop flavors, more than 100 soft serve, and more than 100 milkshake flavors to choose from.
Variety is supposed to be the spice of life but it can be difficult to decide whether to try something new and different or choose one of your favorites.
“The great thing about coming here is you can try a little bit of both. We have lots of different options, so if you come in a group I say everybody gets something different and share,” Maloni said.
Last but not least on our list is a relative newcomer to Baltimore, Moo Moo Cows. Co-founder Will Runnebaum believes we saved the best for last.
“We are clearly the best because we are the only shop that has dairy farm-made ice cream,” Runnebaum said.
While Moo Moo Cows offers old-fashioned farm-fresh ice cream, it doesn't mean customer’s taste buds have to stick with plain vanilla.
“We have cappuccino caramel delight, which is a delicious coffee based ice cream with chocolate covered coffee beans, we have butter brickle, we have mint chip, we have Oreo mint,” Runnebaum said.
it’s just the tip of the iceberg, or ice cream cone, of what visitors will find at Moo Moo Cows.
“We make our own homemade waffle cones from our own recipe. We also make a cinnamon sugar Belgian waffle which we use in our Sundays we have a Belgian waffle sundae with two big scoops of ice cream all the toppings,” Runnebaum said.
So who wins the federal hill ice cream war?
“I think it’s just a matter of being fun and I think that’s what we try to bring to the all of our customers,” Alima said.
“Aside from being a second-generation family business or we make everything homemade on site is that we truly have something for everyone,” Maloni said.
Or Moo Moo Cows?
“Super clean, super pure amazing rich creamy ice cream directly from a dairy farm,” Runnebaum said.
We challenge you to take a trip to Federal Hill, taste for yourself and let us know which one is your favorite!
