Taro ube snow at KŌRI Bakery + Dessert Credit: Matt Gorney

Compared to other cities, Orlando only has two real seasons: summer and summerer (apologies to the Farrelly Brothers). By July, the air feels drinkable, your steering wheel could serve as a branding iron, and just walking to the mailbox qualifies as cardio. Which means this is when we start treating dessert less like a luxury and more like survival equipment.

Fortunately, Orlando has become a powerhouse city for cold sweets — and not just standard ice cream scoops. We are lucky enough to have Japanese kakigōri shaved so finely it dissolves on your tongue like fresh snow, Korean bingsu stacked with fruit and condensed milk, Southeast Asian snow bowls loaded with tropical toppings, creamy Filipino-inspired ice cream, old-school soft serve, Italian ice and every frozen hybrid in between.

Some of these spots are polished dessert destinations. Some are hidden in food halls or tucked behind other businesses. Some are wildly photogenic; others are gloriously old-school. All of them offer a temporary reprieve from Florida’s annual heat delirium.

Here are 12 of the best icy treats in and around Orlando.

Sampaguita Ice Cream
1235 E. Colonial Drive
Named after the national flower of the Philippines, Sampaguita Ice Cream has developed a devoted following for Filipino-inspired flavors that stand out from standard scoop-shop fare. The menu rotates regularly, but expect flavors like ube, pandan, calamansi, mango and Filipino-inspired pastries transformed into ice cream form. The texture is rich and creamy, and the flavors balance the familiar with the genuinely distinctive. Even people who arrive planning to “just sample” usually leave holding a full cup or cone. Located in Mills 50 alongside Orlando’s best cluster of Southeast Asian restaurants, Sampaguita is new but already feels deeply connected to the neighborhood’s evolving food identity.

Koko Kakigōri
620 N. Thornton Ave.
Behind Kaya in Mills 50 sits one of Orlando’s most quietly magical dessert experiences. Koko Kakigōri specializes in authentic Japanese kakigōri: ice shaved so impossibly fine it barely resembles ice at all. Instead, it arrives as a towering, cloudlike sculpture layered with house-made syrups and fruit. Every serving feels meticulously assembled rather than mass-produced; even the ceramic serving bowls themselves are handmade. On brutally hot days, sitting beneath the bodhi tree on the shaded seating area with a melting mountain of kakigōri in front of you feels less like dessert and more like emotional recovery. It’s Friday-Sunday only, and once they sell out, they close up, so don’t dilly-dally.

Freeze Your Brain Shave Ice
7725 Turkey Lake Road
International Drive can be sensory overload, which makes Freeze Your Brain a welcome sugar-fueled cooldown stop amid the tourist chaos. The shop specializes in Hawaiian-style shave ice, crunchy crystals with vividly colored syrups, giant portions and customizable toppings. There are ice cream combinations hidden beneath the shave ice, “snow caps” and tropical flavors designed specifically for weather that feels like a personal attack. It’s cheerful, unapologetically touristy and exactly the sort of sticky-handed summer experience that works best when temperatures hit triple digits.

Saigon Snow
1110 E. Colonial Drive
Inside Asian food hub Mills Market, Saigon Snow delivers Southeast Asian-inspired creations that somehow manage to feel both decadent and refreshing at the same time. Chef Hung Huynh — winner of Bravo’s Top Chef Season 3 — built the concept around the tropical flavors of Vietnamese street desserts. His standout is the Ube Snow, a gigantic bowl of fluffy shaved snow topped with pandan mochi, jackfruit, condensed milk and vibrant purple ube syrup that makes the whole thing look almost psychedelic. The portions are massive enough to share, though you may regret offering to after your first bite. The texture mix is the real magic: chewy mochi, airy ice shavings, fresh fruit and creamy drizzles colliding in every spoonful.

KŌRI Bakery + Dessert
721 N. Mills Ave.
At KŌRI Bakery + Dessert, owner Gillian Lau turns cold desserts into maximalist comfort food. The Mills 50 dessert shop serves elaborate shaved snow bowls piled with whipped cream, mochi, syrups, fruit and ice cream, creating desserts that feel somewhere between a parfait, a sundae and a fever dream. KŌRI also branches out into Asian-inspired cold dessert soups, jellies and specialty drinks, giving the menu much more range than the average ice cream stop. The textures are a huge part of the appeal here: silky panna cotta, chewy mochi, creamy soft toppings and fluffy shaved snow all layered together. It’s sweet without being cloying — exactly the sort of thing you crave (need?) after spending 10 minutes in a Florida parking lot.

SnowBean
515 N. Alafaya Trail
SnowBean serves Korean-style bingsu, the wildly popular shaved milk dessert known for its feather-light texture and extravagant toppings. Unlike traditional crunchy shaved ice, bingsu uses frozen milk shaved into delicate flakes, producing something far creamier and softer. SnowBean’s versions come topped with strawberries, cheesecake bites, black sesame, matcha and fruit combinations stacked high enough to require strategic excavation. The lakeside patio makes this one of the more relaxing spots in town — especially around sunset, when the heat might ease down into merely oppressive.

Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream
multiple locations
At this point, Kelly’s Homemade Ice Cream has become part of Orlando civic infrastructure. The local chainlet built its reputation one shop at a time on small-batch ice cream with rotating seasonal flavors, and people stay fiercely loyal for good reason. The staples are consistently excellent, but the rotating specials are where Kelly’s really shines: inventive flavors that manage to feel playful without tipping into gimmicky territory. Their shops also hit the sweet spot between neighborhood hangout and destination dessert stop, making them one of the safest recommendations in town when indecision strikes.

Greenery Creamery
420 E. Church St.
Owned by the same couple behind Sampaguita, Greenery Creamery has become one of downtown Orlando’s most beloved artisanal scoop shops. The dairy flavors are excellent, but what truly sets Greenery apart is how seriously they treat vegan and plant-based ice cream. Instead of feeling like an afterthought, the vegan options are creamy, rich and thoughtfully developed in their own right. Seasonal ingredients appear regularly, and the menu tends to lean locally inspired without becoming overly precious about it. On sweltering evenings downtown, the line spilling out the door has become a familiar sight.

Propitious Mango
7501 W. Colonial Drive
One of the internet’s favorite frozen desserts has quietly landed inside Orlando’s H Mart. Propitious Mango — the viral Chinese mango ice cream treat that exploded on TikTok and Instagram thanks to its hyper-realistic looking, mango-shaped bars — is stocked at the Asian grocery megastore, giving locals a chance to try the social media-famous treat without boarding a flight to Asia. Instead, grab one (or six) of the intensely fruity, silky and refreshing mango-shaped pops from the freezer case. It’s the perfect excuse to wander H Mart and accidentally spend $47 on snacks you can’t identify. Absolutely no regrets!

Salt & Straw
1486 Buena Vista Drive, Lake Buena Vista
The Portland-born Salt & Straw inside Disney Springs built a national reputation on aggressively inventive ice cream flavors. If you’re the kind of person willing to seriously debate olive oil versus hay as an ice cream flavor, you’ve found your spot. The menu features chef-driven combos like strawberry balsamic with black pepper, pear and blue cheese, or honey lavender. Even when flavors sound bizarre, the execution tends to win skeptics over. Sure, Disney Springs can be overwhelming, but this is one of the few spots there genuinely worth braving the crowds for.

Twistee Treat
multiple locations
The giant cone-shaped buildings make Twistee Treat impossible to miss, and honestly, Orlando would feel emotionally incomplete without them. The local institution specializes in dipped cones, overloaded sundaes, shakes and old-school roadside dessert nostalgia. Classic and reassuringly unpretentious, Twistee Treat isn’t trying to reinvent dessert. They are simply handing you an enormous swirl of soft-serve and sending you back into the humid night slightly happier than before. And sometimes that’s enough.

Jeremiah’s Italian Ice
multiple locations
Family-fave Jeremiah’s perfected the art of the heat emergency treat. Their signature “Jelati” layers Italian ice with soft ice cream into a wildly effective confection that somehow tastes lighter and richer at the same time. There are seemingly hundreds of flavors — tropical fruit, sour candy-inspired options, creamsicle — and the texture is somewhere between slush and sorbet. It’s cold in the most aggressive way, which becomes extremely appealing around August when Orlando feels like someone left the entire city inside a crockpot. In a place where summer lasts roughly 11 months, that level of cold is less of a treat and more of a public service.

This article appears in May 27-June 2, 2026.

12 icy Orlando treats to soothe your summer scorch

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