Dairy Queen Ice Cream Menu (2026): Cones, Sundaes & Prices

Jump to Your Treat

Cones

Vanilla and chocolate soft serve in Kids’, Small, Medium and Large — the original DQ treat, priced from about $2.19.

See the cone menu ↓

Dipped Cones

Chocolate, cherry, butterscotch and cookie-crunch dips, with the price adder and calories added for each flavor.

See dip flavors ↓

Sundaes

Four classic sundaes plus the Peanut Buster Parfait, Banana Split and Cupfection — with full topping math.

See the sundae menu ↓

Novelties

Dilly Bars, Buster Bars and DQ Sandwiches — singles and 6-pack box prices for parties and freezers.

See novelties ↓

Misty Slush & Freeze

The icy non-soft-serve corner of the treat menu — plus the MISTY Freeze, which blends the two together.

See Misty drinks ↓

Scope note: this page covers the classic treat case only. Blizzard Treats, cakes and shakes each have their own dedicated pages, linked at the bottom.

Dairy Queen Dipped Cone Flavors: The Complete Guide

Ask a room of DQ fans for their order and half of them will say the same two words: dipped cone. The Dairy Queen dipped cone flavors are a small menu with a big following, and strangely, no competitor guide lists them all in one place — so here is the full encyclopedia. A dipped cone starts as a regular vanilla cone (chocolate soft serve works too, where offered). The crew flips it upside down and plunges the swirl into a warm bath of flavored coating. The coating sets in seconds into a thin, glossy shell that cracks when you bite it — and has to hold together through the famous upside-down moment first.

How much is a dipped cone at Dairy Queen? Every store sets its own price, and dipped cones consistently price above the matching plain cone — across the menus and listings we reviewed, the dip typically adds roughly $0.50 to $0.80 to a Small. The calories are easier to pin down, because they come from DQ’s official listing: compared with a plain vanilla cone of the same size, a chocolate or cherry dip adds about 40 calories on a Kids’ cone, about 100 on a Small, about 140 on a Medium, and between 100 and 190 on a Large. The shell is mostly coating oils and sugar, which is why the fat on a Small jumps from 7 grams to 15.

Chocolate-Dipped Cone

The classic dip and the one every store carries. A bittersweet, snappy shell over sweet vanilla — the contrast is the whole point.

Sizes: Kids’ · Small · Medium · Large

Above plain cone320 cal (Small)

Adds ~100 cal to a Small vanilla cone

Cherry-Dipped Cone

The bright red one. Sweet, fruity and unapologetically nostalgic — the flavor half the drive-thru line seems to be waiting for in summer.

Sizes: Kids’ · Small · Medium · Large

Above plain cone320 cal (Small)

Confirm availability — not every store stocks cherry

Chocolate Dip

The original and the benchmark. DQ’s chocolate coating is a cocoa-based shell that hardens into a thin, dark jacket with a genuine snap. It is the dip used on the Dilly Bar as well, so if you like the bar, you already know the flavor. On the official nutrition listing, a Small chocolate-dipped cone is 320 calories with 15 grams of fat and 30 grams of sugar — the shell alone accounts for roughly 100 calories over the plain cone underneath it.

Cherry Dip

Cherry is the flavor hunter’s dip: a vivid red, candy-sweet shell that tastes like the best part of a cherry cordial. Its nutrition profile is nearly identical to chocolate (a Small is also 320 calories), but availability is patchier — plenty of stores run chocolate only, and cherry tends to appear at busier, full-menu locations. If cherry is your order, check the app before you drive, or be ready to spot it on the board the moment you walk in.

Butterscotch Dip

The ghost of the dip lineup. Butterscotch — a warm, brown-sugar, almost caramel-like coating — was a standard DQ dip for decades and still rotates through a minority of stores, mostly long-running franchise locations that never took it off their board. It is not on the current national menu, and it is not in our verified calorie benchmark, so we will not invent figures for it: where a store carries it, it is priced like the other dips and nutrition runs close to the chocolate shell. If you find it, order it — sightings get rarer every year.

Crunchin’ Cookie Dipped Cone

The newest way to dip. Instead of a smooth shell, the cone is rolled in a chocolatey cookie-crunch coating, so every bite has grit and crunch rather than a clean crack. Third-party menu listings cluster around $2.50–$4.00 by size, and calorie listings put a Small in the same neighborhood as the classic dips; because it is a newer, unevenly rolled-out item, treat those as observations, not guarantees, and confirm on your store’s board. It is the dip to try if the classic shell feels too plain.

Calorie adders are calculated from Dairy Queen’s official nutrition listing (dipped cone totals minus the matching plain vanilla cone). Price adders are October 2026 observations — every DQ is independently owned and sets its own dip price.

Novelties: Dilly Bars, Buster Bars & the Freezer Case

The novelty case is DQ’s grab-and-go freezer: individually wrapped treats on sticks and between wafers, made to be eaten in the parking lot or bought by the box for the home freezer. Three names carry the case — the Dilly Bar, the Buster Bar and the DQ Sandwich — and they have barely changed in decades, which is exactly why people love them. Novelties are also the one part of the Dairy Queen ice cream menu you can stockpile: a 6-pack box costs less per treat than singles at every store we checked, and the bars keep for weeks at home.

Dilly Bar

A swirl of vanilla soft serve on a stick, dunked in the same chocolate coating as the dipped cone. On the menu since 1955 and still the case’s best seller.

Formats: Single · 6-pack box

About $3.09~223 cal per bar

Observed range $3.09–$3.89 for a single

Buster Bar

The Dilly Bar’s loaded sibling: soft serve layered with salted peanuts and fudge under the chocolate shell. Two textures, one stick, zero leftovers.

Formats: Single · 6-pack box

About $3.89~475 cal per bar

6-packs priced separately per box

DQ Sandwich

Vanilla soft serve pressed between two chocolate wafers. The lightest full novelty on the board and the one kids finish without help.

Formats: Single · 6-pack box

About $3.09 single~183 cal each

6-pack benchmark $12.99

Dilly Bar, in detail. The per-bar calories depend on where your bar was made, a quirk no competitor explains. DQ’s official listing splits Dilly Bars into manufactured bars (the sealed ones shipped to stores; a 6-pack totals 1,340 calories, about 223 per bar) and store-made bars (dipped on site; 1,210 per 6-pack, about 200 per bar). Either way, a Dilly Bar lands near 200–223 calories with roughly 12 grams of fat and 21 grams of sugar in the manufactured version. Also in the case at many stores: the Non-Dairy Dilly Bar, a coconut-based, chocolate-coated bar that is DQ’s one fully dairy-free frozen treat — listings put it at about $2.49 and roughly 220 calories, and it is the bar we point vegan readers to (more on the Vegan Options page).

Buster Bar, in detail. At about 475 calories per manufactured bar (2,850 per 6-pack on the official listing), the Buster Bar is a meal-adjacent novelty — peanuts and fudge will do that. Store-made versions run slightly lighter (2,650 per 6-pack). If you love the parfait but want it portable and freezable, this is your bar.

The rest of the case. DQ’s own allergen guidance still names the Fudge Bar, the Vanilla Orange Bar and the Starkiss bar — a fruit-ice bar that long-time fans remember — among its sealed manufactured novelties. Availability is regional and shrinking; most US stores stock the big three above plus whatever their distributor sends. For parties, the math is simple: 6-packs beat singles per bar, the DQ Sandwich box is the budget pick at a $12.99 benchmark, and a mixed box of Dilly and Buster Bars covers both the classic and the loaded crowd. Taking treats to go is also where Gift Cards quietly shine — a box of bars is the easiest DQ gift there is.

Per-bar calories and macros are calculated from Dairy Queen’s official 6-pack nutrition totals. Singles and boxes are priced by each store; the sandwich 6-pack figure is our October 2026 benchmark observation.

Is Dairy Queen Ice Cream Real Ice Cream?

Here is the honest answer, because this page is not afraid of it: no — not in the legal sense, and DQ has never really claimed otherwise. What Dairy Queen sells is soft serve, and soft serve is its own regulated category. Under US federal standards, a product labeled “ice cream” must contain at least 10% milkfat. DQ’s soft serve recipe runs at roughly 5% milkfat — about half the legal floor — which places it in the reduced-fat frozen dessert family, closer to what regulators call reduced-fat ice cream or a frozen dairy dessert. That is not a scandal; it is the recipe working as designed since 1940.

The lower fat is only half the story. Soft serve is also served soft: it is drawn from the machine at around 18°F, far warmer than the rock-hard 0°F of a scooping cabinet, and it is whipped with more air (called overrun) as it freezes. Warmth plus air plus less fat equals the exact texture DQ is famous for — smooth, light, and gone in five minutes. A hard-pack premium ice cream at 14–16% milkfat is a richer, denser product; a DQ cone is a lighter one. Neither is fake. They are different foods built for different jobs, and the cone’s nutrition shows it: a Small vanilla cone is 220 calories with 7 grams of fat, roughly half the fat of an equivalent scoop of premium hard ice cream.

What is actually in it? DQ’s published soft serve ingredient list starts with milk, sugar, cream, corn syrup and whey, with small amounts of stabilizers and emulsifiers (such as guar gum and carrageenan) to hold the swirl, plus natural and artificial vanilla flavoring. Two questions follow from that list. First, eggs: the soft serve itself is made without eggs — DQ’s official allergens for a plain vanilla or chocolate cone are milk and wheat (the wheat is the cone) — though egg does appear in some blended treats, cake pieces and cookie dough mix-ins. Second, the full ingredient and allergen picture deserves more room than this page has, which is why we built a dedicated explainer on what DQ ice cream is made of, and why the complete numbers live on our DQ nutrition hub and in DQ’s official nutrition listing.

So when someone asks “does DQ use real ice cream,” the fair answer is: DQ uses real soft serve — a real, regulated dairy product with real milk and cream, made to a lighter recipe than scooped ice cream. If your heart is set on the dense, high-butterfat experience, a DQ cone will taste gentle by comparison. If you want the swirl you grew up with, nothing else is quite it.

Does Dairy Queen Have Chocolate Ice Cream?

Yes — real chocolate soft serve, not vanilla wearing a costume. DQ’s official nutrition listing carries a full chocolate cone lineup (160/240/340/480 calories across Kids’/Small/Medium/Large), which makes “dairy queen chocolate ice cream” one of the easiest questions on this page to answer with proof. The chocolate soft serve is cocoa-based, a shade darker and richer than the vanilla, and it pours from its own handle on the machine. Many stores can also twist the two together.

So why do some visitors swear their DQ has no chocolate? Because availability is a store decision. A small treat-only shop with a single machine may run vanilla alone — vanilla is the base for every Blizzard, sundae and novelty, so it wins the only handle. Full Grill & Chill locations almost always pour both. The reliable checks, in order: open the DQ app and look at your store’s cone menu (it lists chocolate explicitly when poured), call the store, or simply look for the second handle and the brown swirl in the machine window when you walk in. And if chocolate is out, the chocolate-dipped vanilla cone is the standing compromise — same cocoa notes, from the dip tank instead of the machine.

Chocolate also hides in plain sight across the rest of this page. The chocolate sundae uses chocolate topping over vanilla by default, but at a store that pours chocolate soft serve you can ask for the sundae built on chocolate instead — a double-chocolate cup for the same board price at most counters. The Dilly Bar and Buster Bar shells, the dipped cones and the Cupfection all lean on chocolate coatings and toppings rather than chocolate soft serve, which is why the flavor never really disappears from the treat case even at a vanilla-only shop. The one build that changes character completely is the twist: half vanilla, half chocolate in a single swirl, milder than straight chocolate and prettier than either. If your store pours it, it is the connoisseur’s cone.