The dessert guide to Charlotte

Dessert in Charlotte is mostly an ice cream story, which makes sense in a place where it’s 85 degrees from May to September. But there’s pie, there are donuts, there’s a candy truck and there’s a tea house, and this guide covers all of it, sorted by what you’re craving. Facts about each business come from its own listing or site.

Ice cream

Two Scoops Creamery makes homemade ice cream at five locations in and around Charlotte and has won awards for it, according to its site. Five locations means one is probably near you, and the catering packages (parties, corporate events, weddings) mean it’s also the answer to “what do we do for dessert at the reception.” Our read: it’s the most consistent scoop in the metro, and the flavor list rewards ordering something you can’t get at the grocery store.

Downstairs Ice Cream on West Main Avenue in Gastonia is the small one. Family-owned, small-batch, hyper-local by its own description, open Tuesday through Saturday from 1 to 8 p.m. It calls its ice cream the absolute best. That’s a big claim from a small shop, and the summer line suggests a lot of Gaston County agrees.

Dairi-O in Harrisburg is the drive-in version: burgers and hot dogs the chain has served for more than 75 years, plus more than 30 flavors of ice cream. Thirty flavors is the number that matters if you have kids. Kilwins in Huntersville does ice cream, fudge and chocolate under one roof, and Front Porch and Provisions in Dallas stocks Riverbend Creamery, a regional favorite, in its general store.

Pie

Carolina Pie Company in Mooresville bakes 9-inch pies from scratch with a family crust recipe that goes back to the founder’s grandfather’s bakery in Massachusetts. It uses local ingredients when it can. A whole pie from here is a better host gift than wine, and it’s gone faster.

Cake, cupcakes and bakes

The Sweet Life in downtown Concord has a case of treats and takes custom cake and cupcake orders for any occasion. Cottage Grove Bakery sells English-style bakes most Saturdays at Josh’s Farmers Market in Mooresville and caters. If the dessert needs to be a specific shape, call The Sweet Life. If it needs to be a scone, find Nikki’s table at the market before 10.

Donuts, hot

The Donut Shack in Monroe makes mini donuts while you wait and takes the operation on the road to festivals, fundraisers and school events across the Carolinas. A bag of hot mini donuts at a fall festival is one of the few desserts that improves when it’s cold out.

The healthy-ish end

everbowl on Gilead Road in Huntersville does açaí bowls and smoothies, and Pulp Juice and Smoothie Bar in Cornelius makes smoothies from real fruit and vegetables with one free enhancer, plus bowls and wellness shots. An açaí bowl is dessert that lets you tell yourself it isn’t. We’re not judging.

Tea and something sweet

Sincerely Tea House on South Main in Davidson, across from the college, builds a tea experience that starts with matcha and goes around the world, with events by reservation. Ebony Bloom Tea Lounge in Mint Hill is a vintage-styled tea room and art café. Both are the right call for an afternoon when you want something sweet without a scoop.

Dessert that comes to you

Palmetto Sweets Co. runs a mobile candy truck for weddings, corporate events and parties across the Carolinas. Two Scoops caters. The Donut Shack caters. A wedding with a donut trailer, an ice cream cart and a candy truck is a wedding people remember, and it costs less than a plated dessert course.

Dessert after dinner

Most of the restaurants in our where to eat guide do a dessert course, but a few are worth staying for. Carrburritos in Davidson, a California-style taqueria, makes everything on site daily, and a taqueria that makes its own churros is a taqueria worth the extra ten minutes. Mario’s in Matthews has been serving house-made classics since 1984, and in a family Italian kitchen “house-made classics” includes the cannoli. The steakhouses, Peninsula Prime in Cornelius and Steak 48 in Charlotte, do the big shareable desserts that a steakhouse is supposed to do; order one for the table and four forks.

A quick word on the chains

Charlotte has all the national frozen-yogurt, cookie and ice-cream chains, and this guide leaves them out on purpose. Not because they’re bad, but because you already know where they are. The shops above are the ones a visitor wouldn’t find on their own, and the ones that keep a Gastonia storefront or a Monroe donut trailer running on the strength of one town’s sweet tooth. That’s worth a few extra miles.

Notes for the sweet tooth

One habit worth picking up: the ice cream shops on this list all post their flavor boards online, and the small ones rotate weekly. Checking before you drive means you don’t arrive on the one Tuesday the peach is gone. It also means you can send a screenshot to the group chat and settle the argument before anyone gets in the car.

Ice cream shops around here shorten their hours in winter and a few close for a month; check before a January drive. Pie and custom cakes need a week’s notice, two around holidays. Farmers-market bakers sell out by mid-morning. And the metro’s dessert scene grows every month, so the coffee, bakeries and sweets directory is worth a look for whatever opened near you since we wrote this.

Know a shop that should be here? Send it in. We take dessert tips seriously.