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Updated August 2026
It’s easy to scoop out ice cream, sorbet, or frozen yogurt for a quick dessert. But it’s almost as easy to turn that frozen pint into a dazzling ice cream pie (photo #1).
It’s as easy as buying a graham cracker or Oreo crust and a couple of pints of your frozen dessert of choice: ice cream, sorbet, or frozen yogurt.
In the recipe below, we provide a simple way to make your own crust: It’s just cookies and butter.
If you want to make your own ice cream or frozen yogurt, we applaud you. We haven’t yet dragged our ice cream maker out of the cabinet.
National Ice Cream Pie Day is August 18th. National Ice Cream Day is the third Sunday in July. National Pie Day is January 23rd.
Below:
> Basic ice cream pie recipe.
> Variations to create your own recipe.
> The history of ice cream pie.
Elsewhere on The Nibble:
> The history of ice cream cake.
> The history of ice cream.
> The history of pie.
> The year’s 50+ ice cream and frozen dessert holidays.
> The year’s 30+ pie and cobbler holidays.
RECIPE: ICE CREAM OR FROZEN YOGURT PIE
Using a purchased crust, you can put this together in 10 minutes plus passive time to re-freeze the softened ice cream. Instead of berries, check out the variations below.
What makes this frozen pie bright and summery is the garnish of mixed berries. You can use stone fruits (nectarines, peaches, etc.) but the berries provide more color and easier slicing.
Ingredients For The Crust
1-1/2 cups graham cracker or cookie crumbs
1/4 cup butter*, melted
For The Filling
2 pints of ice cream, sorbet, or frozen yogurt
Optional: fruit preserves to layer between the crust and the ice cream.
For The Garnish
Mixed berries: blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries
Preparation
1. PREPARE the crust. Crush the graham crackers or other cookies in a plastic bag with a rolling pin. Mix the crumbs with the melted butter and press onto the bottom of the pie plate.
2. SOFTEN the ice cream on the counter for 10-15 minutes (sorbet will take less time).
3. SPREAD the optional layer of preserves atop the pie crust with a spatula, then spread the ice cream.
4. ADD the fruit to freeze with the pie; or reserve it until you are ready to serve and add it as fresh fruit garnish.
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[1] A bounty of juicy summer berries is an easy topping for an ice cream pie. The recipe is below (photo © The Nibble).
[2] If you want to make your own graham cracker crust, our favorite grahams are from Trader Joe’s. They’re superior in flavor to supermarket brands. One bite will convince you (photo © The New Lighter Life).
[3] Just buy an Oreo crust, vanilla ice cream, and cherry pie filling (or make cherry compote). Substitute chocolate ice cream and add some Kirsch to the compote and it becomes a Black Forest ice cream pie. Here’s the recipe (photo © Wild Wild Whisk).
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[4] Limoncello ice cream pie, made with real limoncello. Here’s the recipe. Serve small glasses of the liqueur to sip (photo © The Nibble).
ICE CREAM PIE VARIATIONS
Crust: You can create a gluten-free nut or seed crust, substitute your favorite cookie crumbs or anything else. We once used Corn Flakes and it was a hit!
Filling. Add your mix-ins of choice, from chocolate chips and nuts to chopped fresh or frozen fruit. You can also add three or more tablespoons of your favorite liqueur into the softened ice cream.
Fruit. The recipe in the photo added the fruit before freezing, and a white frost dusts the fruits. We prefer the look and taste of adding the fruit before serving, but that requires a small amount extra work at the last moment. The choice is yours.
Layers. We created a “surprise” pie by creating two layers: vanilla on the top (to better show off the fruit); strawberry on the bottom.
[5] This recipe combines strawberry sorbet and strawberry yogurt, and fresh strawberries (photo © The Nibble).
THE HISTORY OF ICE CREAM PIE
Before the modern ice cream pie was invented, the two components were famously paired together:
1880s: Pie à la Mode. The tradition of putting ice cream on top of pie dates back to the late 19th century in the United States. Stories trace the coining of the term pie à la mode to the 1880s in Duluth, Minnesota, or a 1930s hotel in New York, cementing the concept that pie and ice cream belonged on the same plate.
1920s: Early Frozen Novelties. The 1922 patenting of the Eskimo Pie, an ice cream brick coated in chocolate, proved that consumers loved structured, hand-held or sliceable frozen dairy desserts.
The Mid-20th Century Boom: The Rise of the Home Freezer
The modern ice cream pie—ice cream packed into a crust, frozen, sliced, and served like a traditional baked pie—gained popularity in the mid-20th century (the same with ice cream cake). This was enabled by:
Technological shifts. Before mechanical freezers became widespread in American homes and restaurants (the 1940s and 1950s), enabling home refrigerators with bigger and better freezer compartments, keeping a frozen dessert solid until dessert time was a logistical challenge.
Convenience cooking. As home freezers and store-bought graham cracker or cookie crusts became readily available, home cooks and commercial bakers alike created new frozen desserts. Pressing softened ice cream into a crumb crust, refreezing it, and topping it with fudge, caramel, or fruit became an effortless, no-bake triumph of mid-century convenience cooking.
Commercialization. As the concept took off, it transitioned from home kitchens into commercial production. Companies like the Edwards Baking Company (founded in 1950) eventually revolutionized the frozen dessert aisle, bringing mass-produced, sliceable ice cream pies to grocery stores.
Regional and local sales. Across the U.S., various diners, university creameries, and roadside stands developed their own signature iterations. Their strawberry or peanut butter ice cream pies, among others, drew customers from miles around.
Today, the ice cream pie remains a staple of summer celebrations, potlucks, and diners, celebrated nationally every August 18th and inviting you to quickly assemble your own.
The modern ice cream cake, with distinct layers of ice cream and cake, became popular around the same time. Tom Carvel, inventor of soft-serve ice cream, developed a frozen cake made with ice cream, fudge, and cookie crunch in the 1950s.
> Here’s the history of the ice cream cake.
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*Unsalted butter is the norm, but you can use salted butter if you like the sweet-and-salty flavor profile.
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