The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Look at me go, I'm going to keep my Blizzard of the Month streak alive with only one day left in July.  I spent the first three weeks of July in Utah, and while I did have access to a DQ, I spent most of my time indulging in local brands and scoop shops. Now that I'm back in Minnesota, I have time to go to DQ so I stopped in on my first day back at the office. The July Blizzard is M&Ms Peanut Butter Monster Cookie, described as The M&Ms Peanut Butter Monster Cookie Blizzard Treat is filled with a monstrous combination of peanut butter cookies, M&Ms, choco-chunks, peanut butter topping, and world-famous vanilla soft serve. Apparently  Monster Cookies  are a thing  that I totally missed out on until about a year ago. From the description, this Blizzard should have been awesome, but I found it pretty 'meh.' It just felt like a bunch of different stuff thrown into soft-serve, and the elements didn't really complement each other or go together in

Okay, Dearest Readers. Time to apologize in advance for an epic fail. I do not have any pictures of the actual ice cream with this post. Many moons ago, when Madeline was visiting me over spring break, she wanted to sample all of the flavors of New Orleans Ice Cream Co that they sent to me. We ended up eating almost a quarter of this pint in our sampling, just because we liked it so much. Madeline took pictures of all of the tops of the pints so I would have shots for blogging later, but it took me so long to get around to this one, she doesn't have the picture anymore. And then, there was some iciness when I reopened it, so I didn't want to get that shot. And then I ate the whole rest of the pint while watching a super intense episode of OITNB so I forgot to take pictures. And basically I'm just trying to say SORRY FOLKS! But the pint is pretty, right? Now, this flavor is described as Satsuma, The Crescent City's Favorite Citrus, Is Blended And Swirled Into Our

On a recent trip to Target I was lamenting the fact that I had tried all of the Haagen-Dazs flavors on offer and most of the Ben and Jerry's flavors when I decided to take a look at the available Archer Farms flavors. There were a few that sounded interesting, but Peanut Butter Caramel really caught my eye. I thought that this was a rare flavor combination, but one that had the potential to be really good.  This ice cream is Vanilla ice cream with a caramel peanut butter swirl, peanut butter cups and chocolatey dipped waffle cone pieces. I didn't read the flavor description at the store; instead, I just assumed this would be something simple like a peanut butter ice cream with a peanut butter caramel swirl, so I was quite surprised when I did finally read the description. To be honest, the base was absolute rubbish. I almost spat out the first bite because it tasted like chemicals.  Once you get a few bites into the flavor and the mix-ins start coming into play the c

After tasting and appreciating what Farr did with cookie dough in their  Cookie Dough Brownie  I couldn't resist grabbing a pint of Cookie Dough Caramel. Cookie Dough Caramel is Vanilla flavored custard with rich caramel ripple and cookie dough pieces. I won't comment on the texture because I walked home from the grocery store after purchasing this, and it had enough time to melt a bit and then refreeze in the freezer so there were a few ice crystals.  The Cookie Dough Brownie had a great texture, and I assume this would have the same if you got it home fast enough. The vanilla base wasn't anything remarkable, but it wasn't offensive either.  There were so many caramel swirls and they were so thick that it was almost as if the custard had a vanilla-caramel base rather than a plain vanilla base.  This was a pretty mild and sweet caramel rather than dark or buttery.. The cookie dough pieces were very grainy and tasted eggier than they did in the Cookie D

Dearest Readers, you have probably gotten the sense by now that I am often late to the party with ice cream happenings. However, it is not always totally my fault. While I love Iowa and Heyn's is great, Iowa City is a bit of an ice cream desert in terms of grocery store flavors. When Pecan Sticky Buns first came out, I spent a lot of time gazing longingly at my Instagram feed and reading everyone else's opinions of the flavor. I drove to the Iowa City Super Wal-Mart frequently and checked to see if they had the flavor. But time and time again, I found they did not. Then, alas, only a few days before I was leaving for summer research, I found the flavor! I bought it, and it has been waiting patiently for me in my freezer for my return. So now, finally, here is a review! This flavor is described as Buttery Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Pecans, Sticky Bun Dough & a Cream Cheese Frosting Swirl. Holy moly! This flavor was A LOT. Like Ben & Jerry's took a dessert mad

On our last Sunday in Utah, a group of us did another hike/ice cream combo.  I mean .... best combo ever or best combo ever?  Let me set the scene for you.  5:45pm. A group of five hungry and tired mathematicians determined to get ice cream.  Many things in Utah, particularly small town Utah, are closed on Sundays.  Everything in Midway is closed.  Granny's Drive In in neighboring Heber City is open until 6pm.  Hit the gas.  We made it with a few minutes to spare and weren't even the last in line! As far as ice cream goes, Granny's does exclusively shakes and malts, and they have SO many delicious-sounding options.  I couldn't decide, so I asked the employee taking orders about her favorite flavor.  With absolutely zero hesitation, she enthusiastically exclaimed, "Raspberry!" I couldn't not get a raspberry shake after that. I got a size small because I had ice cream I had to eat later that night (I bought way too much ice cream way too close to the en

On my last trip to the grocery store in Midway I saw that ice cream was on sale so I picked up a couple pints including Tillamook Toasted Coconut Fudge Gelato. This gelato is Silky toasted coconut gelato and rich chocolate fudge, sprinkled with crunchy coconut flakes. Interestingly, Tillamook went with the technique of putting mix-ins on top of the gelato, something usually reserved for scoop shops where the shallow gelato pans make it easy to get a bit of topping in each serving.  Because a pint is deeper than it is wide, it would be kind of hard to get the toasted coconut topping in every bowlful unless you ate the whole pint at once, and the coconut topping was critical to the balance of the flavor. The coconut base was good, but didn't read as toasted coconut to me.  It had a slight hint of sunscreen coconut instead of the rich warm flavor of toasted coconut.  This was actually quite good in combination with the toasted coconut flakes, as the flavor of the flakes d

I'm gonna go ahead and say it, St. Louis is the frozen custard capital of the world. Get at me Wisconsin.  The last evening I was in St. Louis, my parents and I decided to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Ranoush in Kirkwood because we're unoriginal and we always go to Ranoush and Ranoush is tasty. However, the Ranoush in Kirkwood CLOSED!! We were sad, but granted it could have been closed for a long time. We Fentonites don't make our way over to Kirkwood too often because we know all the Kirkwoodians are looking down their noses at us.  Anyways, we decided instead to go to Crushed Red. And because I had a healthy salad for dinner obviously that needed to be counteracted. So we stopped at the Andy's in Kirkwood before heading home. I decided on the Triple Chocolate Concrete because CHOCOLATE. Also can I just say that Andy's is actually the OG of the core trend? Their Jackhammers are basically make your own core sundaes, and they've had th

On my second trip to Timpfreeze, I decided to try a dip cone.  They have vanilla and pineapple soft serve and tons of different dip options.  The ones I remember are chocolate, cherry, butterscotch, and toasted coconut.  There were definitely more options, and they have more listed on their website , but I don't think the website menu is 100% accurate. If someone offers me butterscotch I'm literally incapable of refusing, so I originally ordered a vanilla with butterscotch dip cone.  Unfortunately the butterscotch dip had come out slightly burnt, so I instead went with pineapple and toasted coconut. So summery! They put a little plastic figure in each soft serve cone. So cute! I got a mermaid but I also saw someone with a brontosaur. Individually, the toasted coconut shell and the pineapple soft serve were great, but it didn't turn out to be a great combo.  The toasted coconut shell was amazing and would get 🍦🍦🍦🍦/4 cones on its own.  I love toasted coconut b

Today I have a review of a new-to-me brand, Farr Better Frozen Custard.  I did a bit of research into this company and it seems they have scoop shops and wholesale and started in Ogden, Utah, but their website isn't great so information is a bit hard to track down.  Either way, this is more evidence to support my claim that Utah has a great but totally unknown and unappreciated ice cream scene. There were lots of interesting and delicious sounding Farr's flavors at the grocery store, but Cookie Dough Brownie really called my name.  This is Cookie dough flavored custard with brownie bits and cookie dough pieces. Ice cream glamour shot. Guys.  Seriously.  Utah. Is. Slaying. The. Ice. Cream. Game.  And nobody knows! Or maybe people know and I just didn't know.  I like cookie dough ice cream, but I've never loved it.  I always felt like it was missing something, and I think that something is brownies.  Ben and Jerry's has their iconic Half Baked, but if I ha

Dear Lizzy, You are killing it recently with all the new brands you're trying. Sincerely, Lizzy. No but really, I have totally enjoyed expanding my ice cream horizons, first with Gelato Fiasco, then the 7-Eleven brand, and now Phin & Phebes. Phin & Phebes is a Brooklyn based company that started in 2010 and has hit it big in the last 6 years. You can now buy their ice cream in most Wal-Marts, Whole Foods, Lucky's, and many other stores. But of course this brand isn't sold anywhere in Iowa City. :( Luckily the last few days I was hanging out in St. Louis before driving back to the good old, and at times ice cream barren, Iowa City, my mom picked some Phin & Phebes up for me at Wally World. Now P&P, as I will now call them, has a pretty small flavor line up. Only 12 flavors that are mostly classics, or sophisticated twists on classics, like Toasted Green Tea, Cookie Butter Blondie, Vietnamese Iced Coffee, and the Vanilla Malt Cookie Dough that I tr

No you are not experiencing deja vu! But yes I did post about FoMu quite recently. I stopped at the Cambridge FoMu pop up shop a few weeks ago when passing through Boston to my second research location of the summer. Luckily, I passed through Boston again on my way home! The pop up shop is also located next door to a super tasty vegetarian fast/casual restaurant with a couple locations in Boston. I obviously was stopping their for dinner, and decided to grab some FoMu for the walk back! The first flavor that caught my eye was called Magic Bar. It is described as Coconut ice cream, shaved coconut, dark chocolate pieces, pecans, crumbled oats. I was pretty excited by the prospect of basically a coconut squared flavor, so decided to try the Magic Bar. I decided to mix it up a bit with my second flavor and get something fruity, since I hadn't tried a fruity offering from FoMu yet. I went with Almond Raspberry Crumble described as Raspberry ice cream, crunch almond granola .

 Red Button Sprinkled Animal Cookie Ice Cream.  Guest post by Dan Handschy Presented with a bag of Mother's Circus Animal cookies and a box of Girl Scout Samoas, I would open the bag of Circus Animal Cookies first.  Then, twenty minutes later, after consuming the whole bag, I might open the Samoas, or perhaps just collapse in a fat-induced coma.  The things are like crack to me.  That is why I never buy them.  My children know this about me. When Madeline, daughter number one, traveled to Provo Utah for a math conference, she did what she always does in a new place -- searched around for the local ice cream varieties.  I got a very excited Facebook message from her:  She had discovered Red Button Sprinkled Animal Cookie Ice Cream !  I replied that I would disown her if she had some and didn't send me some somehow.  Well a FedEx box arrived this morning with a styrofoam cooler packed with foam peanuts, dry ice, and two quarts (yes quarts) of said ice cream.  OMG,

Not only was the weekend ice cream crew willing to go out of their way to get ice cream in Provo, they were even game to stop at two separate ice cream shops.  The first was the excellent Rockwell Ice Cream Co (review  here ) and the second was Roll With It Creamery, specializing in Thai rolled ice cream. What is Thai rolled ice cream?  Basically, you start with liquid ice cream base, pour it in a thin layer on flat, cold metal surface and stir and scrape it until it freezes.  When it is frozen into a sheet, you take a spatula and scrape it off of the metal plate using a spatula into a roll. I've wanted to try Thai rolled ice cream ever since it became a ~thing~ on Instagram, and never in my life did I think I'd get to try it in Utah.  I thought I'd have to travel to California or New York or wait months for the trend to percolate to the rest of the country.  I've had multiple people tell me (somewhat jokingly and somewhat not) that they eat lots of sugar in Pr

So all the cool kid ice cream bloggers on Insta have been talking about the 7-11 ice cream brand as of late, especially the s'mores flavor. And the last few days I was traveling, my Airbnb host told me to help myself to the ice cream in the freezer. Now, when you visit friends (or stay with strangers) and they tell you, "Oh help yourself to anything in the kitchen" they don't really mean it. Like, they think they do, but usually they don't actually want you to eat all of the ice cream in their freezer and all of their peanut butter. But I was happy to have super awesome Airbnb hosts who actually meant it when they invited me to help myself. And with a pint of 7-11 in the freezer and specific instructions to eat the ice cream, I was like, "Mmmm yes." The flavor they had in their freezer was Double Cookie Dough, so lets see if this flavor is as tasty as everyone seems to think the 7-11 s'mores flavor is.  This flavor is described as Vanilla