Eat This Now: Cold-Stone Ice Cream

A new crop of chains — Cold Stone Creamery, Marble Slab Creamery, Maggie Moo’s — and Newtown’s own Zebra-Striped Whale are redefining classic ice-cream texture through marble slab manipulation. On an iced, non-porous stone kept cold with freezers, ice-cream scoopers mix and match flavors and toppings with chilled spoons. At Zebra-Striped Whale, choose from such toppings as pretzels, gummy bears and M&M’s, and add them to Thomas Sweet ice cream flavors like mochachino and cake batter. Ask to have the frozen concoction scooped into a homemade waffle cone, the perfect vehicle for this not-too-hard, not-too-soft summertime treat.