The Sweet Treat Guide to Southern Vermont: What to Eat, Drink, and Savor Near Tanglebloom Cabin
From the best maple creemee in Vermont to bonbons made with foraged forest ingredients — a treat-lover's guide to the Brattleboro area and beyond.
photo Little Pond Digital
A stay at Tanglebloom Cabin comes with a lot: a flower farm to wander, a meadow to sit in, a night sky that makes you remember what quiet feels like. But there's another layer to a trip out here that we love pointing guests toward — and it involves a lot of very good eating.
Southern Vermont has an underrated food scene: The bakers, chocolate makers, and farmers in this region are doing some seriously special things, and if you know where to look, a drive to town can turn into one of the best parts of a trip. Here's our current list of sweet spots worth seeking out.
First: What’s a creemee?
If you're not from New England, this word might be a head-scratcher. A creemee is Vermont's name for soft-serve ice cream — but calling it that doesn't quite do it justice. Creemees are made with higher butterfat content than the soft-serve you get at chain spots, which makes them denser, creamier, and richer. They're dispensed from a machine and eaten on the spot, usually in a cone, often at a picnic table or at a farm stand, sometimes while a cow watches you from across a fence (peak Vermont).
The maple creemee is the classic Vermont version — with real maple syrup folded into the mix, offering a subtle, earthy sweetness. If you've never had one, that should be your first order of business.
Lilac Ridge Farm — The best maple creemee in Vermont
About ten minutes from downtown Brattleboro, Lilac Ridge Farm sits on 600 conserved acres in a small valley, and it's the kind of place that makes you glad you made the detour. The Thurber family has been farming this land for four generations — certified organic since the late 1990s — and a few years back they added something that's become a bit of a local landmark: a creemee stand.
What makes these creemees different isn't just the setting (though that helps). Lilac Ridge's maple creemee uses their own certified organic maple syrup, made from their sugarbush right on the farm. The dairy base comes from a neighboring organic operation just down the road. The result is what's believed to be the only certified organic maple creemee on the East Coast — a genuinely meaningful detail in a state that takes its maple and its dairy seriously.
Here's the part that makes it even better: Lilac Ridge offers to top their creemee with "chocolate dirt" made in collaboration with Tavernier Chocolates, the Brattleboro chocolate maker who you'll want to visit on the same trip (more on them in a moment). The combination — organic maple soft serve with Tavernier's house-made chocolate crumble on top — is the kind of thing people drive back for.
Find Lilac Ridge Farm at their farmstand on Ames Hill Road in Brattleboro. Keep an eye on their social media for hours, as they vary by season.
→ learn more lilacridgefarm.com
Tavernier Chocolates — Brattleboro's most surprising shop
The word "bonbon" doesn't quite cover what Tavernier makes. This is chocolate for people who don’t normally care much about chocolate — or for people who love it and want their understanding of it expanded.
Dar and John Tavernier have been making artisan chocolate in Brattleboro since 2014, and their approach is rooted in this particular corner of Vermont: locally grown herbs, foraged forest ingredients, seasonal produce, Vermont dairy. You might find a bonbon flavored with black garlic (yes, really — and somehow yes, delicious) or spruce tip, or wild mint and Vermont cultured butter. Their Botanical Bar features lavender, rose, calendula, and hibiscus petals in dark chocolate. Their chocolate charcuterie — a spreadable, pâté-style ganache that you'd serve on a cheese board — is like nothing else in the region.
On a hot summer day, get the iced drinking chocolate. You will not regret it.
The shop itself is on Main Street in downtown Brattleboro and the a/c provides another layer of sweetness on a hot summer day— a good reason to duck out of the heat and stay a while. Tavernier is open Wednesday through Saturday; check their website for current hours before you go.
→ learn more tavernierchocolates.com
MKT in Grafton — Creemee iced coffee and cookies worth the drive
Grafton is one of those Vermont villages that looks like it was designed to make people feel like they’ve been plopped inside a postcard, and MKT fits it perfectly. Stop here for a creemee iced coffee — a brilliant combination that makes you wonder why this isn't more of a thing — or pick up a cookie in rotating flavors like s'mores, strawberries and cream, and earl grey. These are substantial, bakery-quality cookies, not an afterthought. Grafton is a short and scenic drive from the cabin, and it's an easy add to a day that involves exploring the surrounding towns.
→ learn more mktgrafton.com
Bread From the Earth — Townshend Farmer's Market
If you're visiting on a market day, the Townshend Farmer's Market is worth building a Friday evening around, and Bread From the Earth is the reason to get there early. This naturally leavened sourdough baker makes the kind of bread that turns into an event — open-crumbed loaves, crusty baguettes, and the perfect palette for all your other fresh market finds.
But the cookies and bars are what we really want to tell you about here: the salted dark chocolate rye cookie is exceptional, and if you arrive at the right time, there may be a tahini buttercream brownie available. We don't want to oversell it, but we will say: if you see the tahini brownie, get it.
→ learn more breadfromtheearth.com
Tumblewheat Baking — found around the region
Tumblewheat Baking doesn't have a storefront — instead, you'll find their pastries showing up at coffee shops, cafés, and market pop-ups across southern Vermont, including Patio Coffee and West River Cafe in Brattleboro, and Maple Coffee Co. in Putney. Their approach is serious and a little unexpected: a forbidden rice dacquoise, impeccable cinnamon buns, seasonal fruit galettes made with such care that you slow down while eating them. Finding their goods in a pastry case when grabbing a coffee feels like a good piece of luck.
→ learn more @tumblewheatbaker
A note on the Brattleboro Vermont region
What we love about this list is that all of it is rooted in this specific part of Vermont — the farms, the ingredients, the people who decided to make something worth eating and then did it really well.
Southern Vermont's food scene rewards the people who slow down and pay attention. When you're staying at Tanglebloom Cabin, slowing down is sort of the whole point.
Ready to plan your sweet escape? Tanglebloom Cabin is a glamping-style farm stay open May through October on a working flower farm in Brookline, Vermont, with easy access to everything on this list. Explore the calendar and book your stay at tanglebloomcabin.com— we'd love to have you.
