8 Best Ice Cream Mix-Ins of 2026

Four 16.5-ounce bottles, each with a squeeze top, and that format changes how a sundae gets made: you draw a spiral over the bowl instead of wrestling a jar and a spoon. The Puremade line skips artificial flavors, colors, preservatives and emulsifiers, which is why we reach for these over the syrups shelved by the coffee.

Caramel is the standout of the four — thick enough to sit on a scoop instead of sliding straight off, and restrained enough that it doesn’t bury the ice cream. Dark chocolate is the one for anyone who wants fudge-adjacent without the corn-syrup aftertaste, and white chocolate turned out far more useful than we expected once it’s warmed and poured over a brownie with vanilla.

Two things to plan around. You don’t pick your flavors, and 66 fluid ounces is a lot of sauce for one household — check the dates on the caps before opening all four, since an open bottle lives in the fridge door from then on. And it’s a sauce, not a texture. If you want crunch on that sundae, this isn’t the purchase; the toffee bits are.

Most jarred caramel turns to chewy sheet the second it meets frozen ice cream. This one doesn’t. The base is fresh cream and organic cane sugar instead of corn syrup, so it stays soft and spoonable over a cold scoop, which is the entire reason it’s on this list.

It tastes like caramel and salt rather than caramel flavoring: buttery, a shade darker than the candy-store stuff, and not overly sweet. Over vanilla it’s a sundae; over chocolate it reads almost like salted fudge. The jar is 10 ounces and it’s good warmed over apple slices or stirred into a latte, though used that way it disappears quickly.

The trade is cost. Ounce for ounce this is the priciest sauce in the group, and it’s one flavor in one small jar. We think it justifies the money for anyone who eats caramel with a spoon, because the texture is the product and nothing else here behaves the same way on a cold bowl. Warm the jar in a cup of hot water before you pour.

Sprinkles give you color; toffee gives you flavor, and that’s the gap HEATH fills. The bits are small, irregular shards of English toffee — butter, sugar, a whisper of salt — and against cold ice cream they soften just enough to taste like something instead of dissolving into grit. They’re kosher, gluten-free, and made without artificial colors or flavors, which is more than most candy toppings can say.

Eight ounces is a sensible size for a household: enough for a dozen sundaes plus a batch of cookies, and small enough that you’ll actually finish it. We like them best over vanilla or butter pecan, where the toffee isn’t fighting anything, and they’re the mix-in to reach for when a bowl needs flavor and texture in one move. Know that the pieces run small and smashed rather than chunky — this reads as a crumb topping, not a candy shard.

Nine nuts in one 5-ounce container — peanuts, almonds, cashews, walnuts, Brazil nuts, filberts, pecans, pistachios and macadamias — with no added sugar. That’s rare in a toppings aisle where nut toppings are usually candy with nuts somewhere inside.

On a bowl they’re the savory counterweight. A small handful over chocolate ice cream cuts the sweetness in a way sprinkles can’t, and the same container goes on yogurt, oatmeal or a salad without feeling like dessert. The pieces are chopped fine enough to sprinkle, which we liked on a scoop and less on a cone, where they slide off.

Two limits worth naming. Five ounces disappears faster than you’d think if more than one person is using it, and the mix runs peanut-heavy, so don’t count on a macadamia in every bite. Those are the trade for a clean ingredient list and a topping that works as readily on a salad as on a sundae, and we think that trade is worth making.

Think of the little marshmallows in a box of cereal — crunchy, faintly chalky, oddly hard to stop eating — and you have these in a tub. They’re dehydrated rather than soft, so a spoonful over a scoop gives you a crunch that survives the cold instead of turning into a slippery lump the way a fresh mini marshmallow does.

That crunch is the whole appeal, and it’s why the container lives next to the sprinkles in our kitchen. The vanilla is mild, the pieces are genuinely tiny, and the 8-ounce reusable tub seals well enough that they stay crisp for weeks — the thing that usually kills a bag of marshmallows.

They’re also the second-most versatile thing here after the jimmies: a spoonful in hot cocoa (they do eventually dissolve), on a latte, over cereal, or set out in a jar for a sundae bar. If you’re building a hot chocolate or ice cream station for a party, this is the container to buy.

The limit is expectation. If you want a soft, pillowy marshmallow on a sundae, this isn’t it and won’t become it — the texture is closer to candy than to marshmallow, and more than a small handful starts to feel like eating cereal straight from the box. A little goes further than you expect.

If you grew up near a soft-serve stand, crunch coat means something specific: a cone dipped in peanut-and-sprinkle rubble that sticks to the ice cream and shatters when you bite it. This is that, in a one-pound bag.

Inside is a mix of bright colored sprinkles and small pieces of peanut brittle, so you get color and peanut-toffee flavor at once, with a crunch that holds up under a scoop of vanilla. We like it best on soft-serve or a slightly softened scoop, where the pieces actually stick instead of sliding to the bottom of the bowl.

The bag reseals, which matters more than it sounds — this is the kind of topping that goes flat and tasteless once air gets at it. Press the air out, keep it in the cupboard rather than the fridge, and don’t expect it to last indefinitely; a stale bag tastes like nothing and there’s no reviving it.

Our hesitation is cost. This is a pricier way to buy crunch than the toffee bits, for a topping with exactly one job. If you want the crunch-cone experience at home it delivers precisely that; if you simply want texture and flavor on a sundae, HEATH does it for less.

This is not a mix-in, and it’s worth saying so up front. McCormick’s finishing sugar is coarse sugar with caramel flavor and salt — closer to a rim garnish than to a sauce or a chip — and that’s exactly why it earns a place: it does a job none of the chunky toppings can.

Sprinkled over a scoop it forms a thin, crunchy sweet-salty crust rather than dissolving the way fine sugar does. It’s arguably better on the foam of a cappuccino than on ice cream, and it’s the one thing here we use more often in drinks than on dessert.

The flavor reads savory-sweet rather than candy-sweet, and a couple of shakes is enough for a bowl — which is good, because a heavy hand turns a sundae salty fast. It’s also good on buttered popcorn and around the rim of a glass for a dessert cocktail.

Buy it if you like the idea of a sweet-salty finish rather than a gooey one, or if you already take caramel in your coffee and want the flavor without the liquid. Skip it if you want something to heap on. This is a finishing touch, and it’s the only thing here that gets better the less you use.