It's almost a dream come true: a cold, sweetly satisfying treat with less than 100 calories. Forget about ice cream, try the freshly-mixed frozen yogurt at Fruity Yogurt on Route 206 in Hillsborough (they do have soft-serve ice cream if you can't). The brightly-lit store features eight varieties daily, mixed on premises and offered self-serve style. Today, you can pick your cup, then serve up a helping of No Sugar Vanilla, or strawberry, honeydew, peanut butter, cookies and cream, plain tart or taro (a "root vegetable" from Malaysia that is high in fiber); add your choice of several dozen …

Ava's Home Made Ice Cream, at 1 W. Henry St., on a side street leading from downtown Basking Ridge, is in a location destined to draw customers — right next door to the Oak Street elementary school. The whimsically decorated old-fashioned ice cream shop, with its pictures of cute faces painted on giant ice cream scoops outside the building, can expect kids out the door at the end of the school day in the warm months each fall and spring, said Ava's manager, Lindsay Zorn said. Students walk over from Oak Street and other township schools in the area, she said. Ava's is open from March through …

Cold Stone Creamery burst upon the New Jersey scene about five years ago, and Somerset County shops in Warren and Bedminster are helping to spread the company's reputation. Famous for their original flavors—like Chocolate Cake Batter Ice Cream—Cold Stone is earning raves by focusing on quality and taste, perhaps over variety. The Warren Cold Stone Creamery is located at 55 Mountain Blvd., nearly directly across from the township municipal complex, and is open from noon to 10 p.m. daily, year-round. A location at 428B Route 202-206 in Bedminster, in the same Hills shopping center as Kings, …

Not all of the popular ice cream spots in the area are official ice cream parlors.Take Fresh restaurant, off Allen Road in at the Village Highland Center in The Hills section of Basking Ridge. Fresh is one of New Jersey's few certified "Green Restaurant Association" eateries.Fresh wasn't always a semi-organic, health-conscious restaurant, with such touches as bamboo floors and wooden window shutters recycled from an old barn. In fact, a few years ago, it was a Dairy Queen that served up such specialties as burgers, fried chicken and fries along with DQ's trademark ice cream. After it's remake…

Few things are as soothing as ice cream on a hot summer afternoon—part guilty indulgence, part childhood memory, part plain delicious snack, ice cream is an obsession for many people. Consequently, we're more than happy to help feed that obsession with a rundown on the more than 48 flavors of ice cream you can enjoy at Gabriel's Fountain, at 1948 Washington Valley Road in the Martinsville section of Bridgewater. Somewhere in the bowels of Gabriel's, there lives an evil genius busily crafting exotic and—dare we say it? unique—flavors for ice cream, which his minions make onsite. So far, this …