Ample Hills Creamery

The scoop counter came out of a pushcart. The Brooklyn-born Ample Hills Creamery started in 2010 as a temporary cart run by a husband-and-wife team of former high school teachers, then took a permanent Prospect Heights shop in 2011, built on homemade ice cream and flavors that work like small Brooklyn stories. The name comes from Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” which is a fair clue to how the menu is written.

A New York parlor that made its own base

The early identity was unusually production-minded for a scoop shop: Ample Hills pasteurized on site and became New York City’s first registered dairy plant ice cream parlor. That is where the reputation came from, house-made bases and mix-ins rather than a wholesale tub with a logo on it. On the Opinionated About Dining Cheap Eats list for North America it was Recommended in 2023 and ranked 362nd in 2025.

The business has had a second act. It grew fast, reaching sixteen shops across four states by 2019, then entered bankruptcy in 2020 after debt-heavy expansion and a costly 15,000-square-foot Red Hook factory. The founders regrouped through a Prospect Heights shop called The Social and bought Ample Hills back in 2023 with outside backing, returning to the handmade approach and the slower growth that made the brand distinctive in the first place.

Flavors written like short stories

The flavor language is built on mix-ins, cereal, chocolate, baked goods and a hook. “It Came From Gowanus” is the best known, a salted chocolate and brownie ice cream that the Food Network once ranked first in the country. “Breakfast Trash” folds Fruity Pebbles and Froot Loops into the base, while “O Captain! My Captain!” uses a Cap’n Crunch base with white-chocolate-tossed Fruity Pebbles so the cereal keeps its crunch.

Holiday and collaboration flavors run on the same logic. “Thanksgivukkah” put pecan pie together with Sufganiyah jelly donuts, and a Disney Star Wars collaboration produced a marshmallow “Light Side” and a chocolate “Dark Side.” Neighborhood exclusives went further still, with “Meet me on the Long Meadow” for Park Slope and “I Contain Breakfast Foods” at Fulton Ferry Landing in Dumbo.

Start with Ooey Gooey Butter Cake

Ooey Gooey Butter Cake is the natural first scoop, dense and cake-heavy and the clearest statement of the house style. From there, Death By Chocolate and Banana Pudding are the straightforward comforts, and Nonna D’s Oatmeal Lace is the one to take if you want the baked-goods side without the chocolate.

The counter runs on walk-up scoops, pints and toppings, so the practical move is one scoop of a mix-in flavor now and a pint of something simpler to carry out. Local families, Brooklyn regulars and visitors all use it the same way, and the flavors with the longest names are usually the ones worth the queue.