New Homemade Ice Cream Shop Now Open in Dravosburg

A brand new family-run ice cream shop has opened its doors in Dravosburg, churning out creative flavors of fresh-made ice cream daily.

Crave Frozen Desserts offers both dairy and non-dairy ice cream options, all made in-house.

Valerie Gauvain, along with her father Andrew, opened the shop in January, and it’s a family affair.

“The whole family is working at the shop,” Valerie Gauvain says. “My dad was a culinary chef for years, then went into restaurant management. He always wanted to do something with ice cream, so we started this.”

The shop offers more than 20 dairy-based ice cream flavors every day, and three to six non-dairy ice cream flavors. The family, Gauvain says, has been having a lot of fun coming up with unique flavors.

“We make everything in house, everything from scratch,” she says. “We’ve been experimenting with new flavors, and love what we’ve come up with so far.”

Gauvin’s current favorite flavors include Butter Pecan (“It’s really actually buttery – a lot of Butter Pecans have fake butter flavors, but this is a little different,” Guavain says), Velvet Elvis, a triple-flavor combination with peanut butter, banana and chocolate, and Ruby Cheesecake, a strawberry and raspberry ice cream with ruby chocolate and cheesecake bites. The Ruby Cheesecake has been a bestseller since they introduced the flavor last month.

Other ice cream flavors include Butterfinger, Lemon/Blueberry, Rocky Road, Salted Caramel, Strawberry, English Toffee, Pistachio, Raspberry, Mint Chip and Aztec Chocolate.

They’ve also introduced a collaboration ice cream with 412 Brewery called Milkshake IPA, made with the brewery’s Milkshake IPA, plus vanilla and caramel. In March, Gauvain will be opening a pop-up at the Northside brewery’s taproom with Crave ice cream whenever the brewery is open.

All of Crave Frozen Dessert’s dairy is from Galliker Dairy Farm, and the non-dairy ice cream is coconut-based. Non-dairy flavors on the current menu include Oreo, Strawberry Banana, Chai, Almond Joy and Turtle.

Crave Frozen Dessert is open Monday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Crave Frozen Dessert (751 Pittsburgh-McKeesport Blvd., Dravosburg)