Dairy Queen's Fall Blizzards Ranked Worst To Best

Sugar, spice, and everything nice: That is what fall dreams -– and Dairy Queen's seasonal Blizzard treats -– are made of. This fall, the fast food chain's Blizzard menu includes six more flavors — some returning favorites as well as some new ones — featuring fruit, spices, chocolate, and so much more.

It's worth noting that 2023 is particularly special for the chain's frozen soft-serve dessert with mix-ins. This year, the Blizzard is 38 years old, which, while not a typical anniversary to highlight, Dairy Queen has decided is important enough to celebrate during September by selling Blizzards for $0.85. Now that the promotion has ended, we are back to paying full price for soft-serve goodness, so we want to ensure that everyone is making good choices with their Blizzard dollars. With the range of fall flavors available for a limited time from the chain, deciding which Blizzard to order can be difficult. So we set out to try the whole fall menu and determine which treats are perfectly tasty and satisfy a need for fall flavor and which ones can melt into obscurity.

Well, one of Dairy Queen's seasonal Blizzards had to come in last, and we are sad to say it is the Caramel Fudge Cheesecake flavor. This Blizzard is as clunky to eat as its name is to say.

In theory, this Blizzard should have hit every note. It is a vanilla soft serve base with chocolate-covered caramel pieces and chunks of cheesecake bites. It should be sweet, a little salty, and decadent. But the end result is unwieldy and overwhelming.

There is simply too much going on in this Blizzard. The caramel fudge pieces and the cheesecake bites are both sizable, which means that getting a decent bite with a little of everything is nearly impossible. When you do get a bite, the pieces are so big that they become the prominent flavor. You either get cheesecake or caramel fudge. Ultimately, we think this Blizzard would have been better with a retooling of the concept. Perhaps the pieces could have been crumbled more or maybe just smaller. Or Dairy Queen could have used a caramel swirl instead of the large caramel chunks.

The Royal Reese's Fluffernutter is the newest of the fall Blizzards at Dairy Queen. It starts with vanilla soft serve that is swirled with peanut butter, Reese's candies, and a hypothetical marshmallow center. We say hypothetical because we did not find any such center. It is possible they left the center out of ours by mistake or that it was swirled in with the peanut butter so well that it became undetectable, but either way, the lack of marshmallow fluff was a disappointment. You can't really have a fluffernutter without the marshmallow, now can you?

The other big issue we have with this is that despite being pitched as a new flavor, it is remarkably similar to a different seasonal Blizzard, the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Pie, which is superior to this one in just about every way. While the Royal Reese's Fluffernutter Blizzard is fine, that is all it is. The dessert is a little boring and unoriginal and does not live up to the fluffernutter name.

The Choco-Dipped Strawberry Blizzard from Dairy Queen is so close to being a top contender. But the execution is just a little off. Chocolate and strawberries are a classic pairing. This Blizzard mixes vanilla soft serve with strawberries and chocolate chunks. Once again, we see Dairy Queen not quite delivering on the promised flavor.

The main issue is that the strawberries are in large chunks. Each bite can easily have vanilla soft serve and chocolate chunks, but only a few will have the promised strawberry pieces, which means you just have a vanilla chocolate chunk Blizzard most of the time. We wonder if a strawberry soft serve or a strawberry swirl would have been more effective. But there is no reason to speculate on what we can't have.

There is also one other small bone to pick with the Choco-Dipped Strawberry flavor. We appreciate the pleasantly fruity nature of this Blizzard, but we have to wonder if it thematically works with the rest of the lineup. This is a fall menu. Strawberries are famously only in season during a portion of the summer. So why is this even here? This would make more sense around Valentine's Day since chocolate-covered strawberries really do not say "fall."

The Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Pie dessert is clearly the superior of the two Reese's Blizzards introduced on the fall menu at Dairy Queen. This Blizzard starts with vanilla soft serve and has Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and graham cracker pieces mixed in. It is supposed to have whipped topping on top, but ours did not. Still, this was a better Blizzard than the Royal Reese's Fluffernutter.

For one, we really did not miss the peanut butter mixed into the soft serve. The Reese's Peanut Butter Cups offered enough peanut butter and chocolate flavor in each bite. Additionally, the distribution of Reese's was excellent, giving a little of each in every bite.

The real stars, though, are the pieces of graham cracker. They are clearly supposed to represent a graham cracker crust in a chocolate peanut butter pie. In the Blizzard, it adds a crunch and texture not found in most of the other flavors on the fall menu. The Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Pie Blizzard is a solid choice and only comes in third place in our ranking because there are two flavors that are even better.

It is hard to beat something with Oreos. This Blizzard is made with vanilla soft serve, crushed Oreo cookies, and chocolate pieces. The whole thing is then finished with whipped topping. It is simple, but darned if it is not effective too. The crushed Oreo pieces blended with the soft serve give the frozen dessert a chocolatey flavor, a nice change from the basic classic Dairy Queen vanilla. Because of this, it also has a hot cocoa-like flavor.

Much like the graham cracker pieces in Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Pie Blizzard, the Oreo cookie pieces add crunch and texture. The additional chocolate chunks really just drive home the chocolatey goodness.

We were glad to get whipped topping on this one, as smushed as it was from the lid. It really rounded out the hot cocoa feel of this Blizzard, and we thought it committed more to the theme. Hot cocoa may be a smidge more on the winter side than the fall side, but it still makes more sense on this menu than Choco-Dipped Strawberry Blizzard.

The Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough Blizzard is the clear winner on Dairy Queen's fall Blizzard menu. It is sweet, it is spicy, and it has cookie dough. It has everything you could possibly want. The base is, once again, vanilla soft serve, but this is mixed with cinnamon sugar-covered cookie dough pieces. The cinnamon sugar comes off the cookie dough in the mixing process, which really means the whole thing tastes like a Snickerdoodle cookie with added chunks of cookie dough. The cookie dough chunks are an excellent size and are chewy and wonderful. Not everyone likes cookie dough, but if you do, this Blizzard will not disappoint. We also appreciate that cookie dough is being used in something other than a chocolate chip cookie dough flavored thing. There are so many delicious cookie doughs. Why not branch out?

Not only is this Blizzard delicious, but also what is more fall than cinnamon? This Blizzard feels most on brand for a seasonal menu of Blizzards. 

We had to make a tough decision between the Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough and the Oreo Hot Cocoa flavors. Ultimately, we knew there was no doubt that — between the delicious flavor and the commitment to the theme — the Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough Blizzard had to be the winner.