Ice Cream Nachos in Three Ways

Forget the ice cream sundae and try these ice cream nachos for your next summer dessert instead. Cinnamon ice cream cone chips get topped with classic ice cream toppings for a delicious and unique frozen treat everyone will love. Make a big batch to share with friends or just make some for yourself, I’ll never tell!

Voicemails for Isabelle Dessert Nachos

My sister and I have been talking about making some sort of ice cream dessert all summer long because well I love ice cream. We already have a strawberry ice cream, a no-churn ice cream recipe, and even a banana split cake and nothing new was coming to mind.

Then I watched the rom-com Voicemails for Isabelle on Netflix. I won’t spoil the entire movie for you because I highly recommend watching it, but let’s just say that it is all about the relationship between two sisters and somewhere in there are dessert nachos.

After watching the movie, I knew I wanted to make dessert nachos with my sister. Or learn a dance but dancing isn’t my thing so these ice cream nachos were born.

We tried out a ton of different topping variations and chip options. Most of them were good but the three we decided to share in this post are excellent. Or at least my family thinks so. Also, totally unique from one another so you could make one tonight, one tomorrow, and one the next day and probably be okay.

You could also setup an entire ice cream nacho bar at a party for people to make their own if you really want to go all out. Or just make them for yourself to enjoy while you watch Voicemails for the first time, or again.

The ingredients above are for the classic version of this recipe (minus the brownies, totally forgot to photograph those). But let me be clear – the beauty of these ice cream nachos is that as long as you have the cinnamon ice cream cone chips and ice cream, you can really top them with whatever sounds good to you.

1. Waffle cones – you definitely want the actual waffle cones, not cake cones.
2. Hot fudge – we used some of our homemade hot fudge but you could absolutely use store-bought as well.
3. Brownies – you can use store-bought or homemade brownies would be even better!
4. Sugar – you’ll need both regular and light brown sugar for these dessert nachos. If you are using organic sugar, you may need to add a few minutes to the baking time to let it caramelize into the cones.
5. Brown sugar – Make sure your brown sugar is soft enough that it can combine easily with the other ingredients. If it’s a little hard, use your hands to combine it well.

There’s not a lot to this recipe, but I’ve included some of the tricks we learned while trying out all of the variations.

1 – Scoop Your Ice Cream

This seems really silly but the first thing you want to do is scoop your ice cream onto a parchment lined baking sheet then place it in the freezer until you’re ready to make the nachos. Freezing it in scoops ahead of time makes adding the ice cream to the nachos later much easier, and the ice cream won’t melt as fast!

2 – Make the Cinnamon Cone Chips

Start by lining a cookie sheet with parchment paper or foil and preheating your oven to 400 degrees.

Then it’s time to make your cinnamon cone chips. There’s a technique to breaking the cones into larger pieces versus smaller chunks – put your hand in the inside of the cone toward the center and carefully break it there first. Then you can break the rest of it into smaller chunks but still big enough to be nacho size chip.

Place all of the chunks carefully into a gallon size bag.

Add melted butter and zip up the bag. Carefully move the bag around so the chips get coated in the butter. You really don’t want to break the chips smaller so do it carefully.

Combine the sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon into a bowl until it’s mixed together really well. This is where you’ll need to use your hands if you have larger or harder chunks of brown sugar, you really want it to be a sand texture without chunks.

Add that to the bag and again, carefully move the bag around until the cone pieces are completely coated.

Place them on the prepared baking sheet and bake in the oven for 4 to 5 minutes or until they’re lightly browned but not burnt.

Remove from the oven and let them sit for about 15 minutes until they’re cool enough to handle and so they don’t just melt the ice cream immediately.

3 – Add Your Nacho Toppings

This is where the fun part comes in. Add all of the toppings that you want to finish off your ice cream nachos.

There’s really no skill involved here but if you want recommendations, this is the order I would add the toppings in:

1. Waffle cone chips – obviously start with these, they’re the chips after all!
2. Ice cream – add your ice cream next so any toppings go on well on top of the ice cream as it melts.
3. Whipped cream – if you’re using this, add it right next to the ice cream!
4. Sauces – this will hold the other toppings in place as you add them!
5. Larger Add-on toppings -nuts, chopped fruit, brownie bits, etc.
6. Small finishing touches – sprinkles, cherries, Oreo crumbs, etc.

Or do it however feels right to you. The whole point is to have fun with it. It’ll taste good whether the sauce is on top of the ice cream or below it, I promise!

If it looks anything like this, it’s going to taste delicious.

Serve these immediately because it’s ice cream obviously. And the whipped cream may honestly melt faster than that, especially if you froze the ice cream scoops like I recommended!

You can either serve the entire tray and have everyone eat directly from it – way more fun – or you can put the tray out and let people move some nachos to their own plate to enjoy. Not quite as fun but probably a bit cleaner and more hygienic for larger groups.

You can also serve them alongside all of the toppings if someone wants more hot fudge or whipped cream for example. Or all the maraschino cherries!

Remember all of those other variations we tried? These were the other two we thought were worth sharing because they’re unique and delicious.

Both start with the same cinnamon chip base and get finished with whipped cream and cherries but get different ice creams, sauces, and toppings.

You really can’t put the nachos together ahead of time but you can save time by prepping all the pieces ahead of time.

Make your cinnamon cone chips according to the recipe instructions and store them in an airtight container for up to a couple of days. Just make sure the storage container is a harder one rather than a zipper top bag to protect them or keep the zipper top bag in a safe place so they don’t get crunched.

Scoop and freeze your ice cream. Chop any fruit or nut toppings.

Then when you’re ready to make the nachos, just toss it all together and enjoy!

Recipe FAQs

If you like summer desserts like these ice cream nachos, try these next!

• Homemade strawberry sorbet
• Fruit salsa with cinnamon chips
• Key lime icebox cake
• Sand pudding buckets
• Kool Aid pie