The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

So blogger.com is a bit silly and won't let both Madeline and I contribute to the same post from our two different accounts. Lame. So Lizzy will be writing in this font. And Madeline will be writing in this font.  Yesterday, Madeline and I attempted to make ice cream with her vintage ice cream maker she got as a birthday present from our parents. We decided to make Rocky Road (chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and pecans) and Ginger Peach ice creams. We had a recipe for the Rocky Road and a Peach ice cream recipe and we were just sort of winging it with the ginger part of things. We bought much dairy product at the grocery store and very peaches and even more ginger. Making the bases was super easy and they tasted delicious from our samplings. We took everything over to Madeline's friends' house, bought lots of ice and lots of salt and we were all set to get churning.  Such dairy. Wow. At first things seemed to be going great.  We had alternating layers of ice and s

As Madeline already mentioned, I am visiting her in Minneapolis. Obviously the first thing we did was go to an ice cream shop. Sebastian Joe's was just the perfect little neighborhood ice cream shop. It opens at 7am almost daily because it also serves coffee and coffee drinks, but this seems like the type of place that if you wanted a cone of ice cream with your morning coffee, you could do that. The people working were friendly, the atmosphere was relaxed, and on a slow day like the one we went I bet I could even park at one of their tables and read a book or do homework for a few hours. I got two flavors, an inventive one and a classic. After long discussions with my friend Lizzie, I have decided something about ice cream shops that sell crazy flavors. These shops are all well and good, fabulous actually, as long as they have perfected some basic flavors. If you can't give me a delicious chocolatey creation I don't want your lemon-chili-basil-vanilla-tea flavor. It'

Yesterday was Memorial Day, and I went to a barbeque hosted by friend's who live near Sebastian Joe's.  The only logical conclusion to a night of beer and grilled meats was to walk the block to Sebastian Joe's to enjoy an ice cream cone.  Apparently everyone else in Minneapolis had the same idea, because the place was packed!  The line did move quickly, and we were not kept from our ice cream for long. I decided to try the Loco Coco flavor, described as "strawberry ice cream with coconut and cayenne pepper."  This ice cream was hands down amazing.  The ice cream base itself wasn't strongly strawberry-flavored, but in this case that was a good thing.  The plainer base served as a clean palette for the three flavors to mix together.  The chunks of strawberry were small, but flavorful.  Normally I like big chunks, but here the small chunks worked well because they were the same size as the coconut chunks.  The cayenne pepper provided just the right amount of k

Strawberry ice cream is one of my favorite ice cream flavors, but only if it is done well.  It is also one of what I think of as the 'Big 3' ice cream flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate, and Strawberry.  There are two main things I look for in a strawberry ice cream. 1) The flavor of the base strawberry ice cream.  Ideally this should taste like strawberries and cream.  I do not like fruit flavored ice creams that try to disguise the fact that they are a dairy-based dessert.  Dairy and fruit can pair well together if done right, and strawberry is one of the easiest fruits to do this with. On this front Haagen Dazs delivered.  The ice cream was perfectly creamy and smooth.  I could taste the strawberry and I could taste the cream and it was wonderful. 2) The fruit pieces.  Ideally these should be be big, juicy, chewy chunks.  Also, I should be able to readily identify them as actual pieces of strawberry. On this front Haagen Dazs failed miserably.  The 'strawberry' chu

I decided it is well past time I write a blog post about an ice cream bar. For my first post about an ice cream bar I decided to go with the cream of the crop, a Magnum. I stood in Target for a long while deciding which one of the many flavors of Magnum to try. I opted to go with the Infinity Chocolate for two reasons. First, the description sounded the most scrumptious. Second, as we know there is more than one infinity, right Madeline? And if I had to choose which kind of infinity I had to deal with for, well, forever, I would choose the chocolate kind. Chocolate infinity is real mathematics, fo sho. Also, with my great mathematical authority I would say the chocolate infinity is definitely uncountable. The Magnum Infinity Chocolate Bar is described as Dark Chocolate Ice Cream with a Chocolate Swirl, Dipped in Dark Chocolate and Cocoa Bean Nibs. My excitement level? Through the roof. Anything that describes itself as "Dark Chocolate Ice Cream" makes me salivate. How

Sorry I didn't take any pictures.  I get really nervous when I eat ice cream in a cone, because I would be devastated if my ice cream fell over.  I didn't want my ice cream to start melting during a photo shoot in the summer sun. I mentioned way back in my intro post that I was underwhelmed by  Sebastian Joe's  ice cream the first time I tried it.  I like that they offered unique/weird flavors like Roasted Garlic Almond Chip (which I had a sample of.  It was weird.  Not bad, but I wouldn't want more than a bite of it).  My first time there, I got two scoops in a waffle cone: one scoop of Cinnamon and one scoop of Mandarin Orange.  I probably should have gone with something chocolate-y, but  oranges with cinnamon  is one of my favorite summertime desserts.  I was underwhelmed.  I felt the cinnamon ice cream was way too creamy (like, ok, I know it's ice cream and this is a stupid thing to say), and needed a much stronger cinnamon flavor to balance out the strong da

This post is for you archaeology fans. Not really, but kinda. I like to call my style of eating Ben & Jerry's the Archaeological Dig Style. And Peanut Butter Cup is one of the best Ben & Jerry's flavors for this style. To describe this style: instead of just eating the pint from top to bottom like a normal person, someone who employs the Archaeological Dig Style searches for the big chunks, and once they are located, they are excavated. I really think it's the best way to go about things. Sorry I don't have a banana for scale, a spoon will have to do. To really switch gears now, last time I reviewed a Ben & Jerry's flavor I made a promise that I would look more into what changed for the worse when Uniliver bought Ben & Jerry's. I found two things. First, Uniliver did some downsizing, eliminating jobs in a company committed to providing as many good, reasonably paying jobs as possible. Second, Uniliver got ride of some shops at which 40% o

Those of you from St. Louis reading this blog are probably going, "WTF?!?!?!" right about now. Jilly's cupcakes is the premier cupcake place in St. Louis...or Ladue... Their address says St. Louis, but they are close enough to Ladue and the prices of their cupcakes scream "We are catering to rich Ladue and Clayton residents that want to spend too much money on cupcakes!!!" We're talking ~$4.75 a pop. But then again, these babies might just be worth it (and for my Wash U readers, they take bear's bucks!). They are HUGE and the frosting is piled high. There is also some sort of filling, like creme, or jelly, or chocolate, or caramel, in the middle, too. Seriously, these things are great. In fact so great that Jilly's cupcakes won Food Network's Cupcake Wars TWICE! This is the Cuban Coffee cupcake. Description:  Cake: Coffee Chip -- Filling: Coffee Dulce de Leche -- Topping: Espresso Swirl Buttercream, Café con Leche Crunch, Sweet Cuban Coffee S

Vanilla Caramel Fudge is described as " Vanilla Ice Cream with Swirls of Caramel and Fudge."   Any child would recognize vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, and caramel sauce as the three pillars upon which any respectable elementary school ice cream party stands.  Maybe you also added sprinkles, or gummy bears, or strawberry syrup, but you always always always had vanilla ice cream, fudge, and caramel. This Ben and Jerry's flavor is like your childhood ice cream parties grew up and got sexy.  The first thing that hits you when you take a bite of this ice cream is a strong, but not overpowering vanilla flavor.  It's not just any vanilla flavor either; it's high quality vanilla.  This is a vanilla ice cream I would enjoy eating plain, it doesn't need the fudge and caramel to make it delicious.  That said, the caramel and fudge were also awesome.  They were thick and liquidy and perfect in texture, and the swirls were huge and thick!  If you've tried the core f

Last week in the buy 2 get 1 free sale I mentioned I picked up Talenti Sea Salt Caramel.  This was a great decision.  Imagine the only kind of chocolate you have ever eaten in Hersehy's milk chocolate and then someone hands you a bar of schmancy 60% cacao dark chocolate and your head just explodes.  This ice cream was the dark chocolate of the caramel world.  Dark and complex and (almost) smoky.  I think the (almost) smokiness came from the sea salt.  There were small chunks of caramel candy, which I at first thought were chocolate but were actually small caramel candies with a harder shell and soft gooey insides.  Caramel in caramel in caramel, i mean COME ON! (edit - I just read on the Talenti website that it is chocolate covered caramel bits, but still.) Don't judge me for eating straight out of the container.  It's finals time.  Anything goes. This ice cream was good, but really really rich and best enjoyed in small doses.  Imagine this scenario: You are on

"I think Dickens was eating Cookie Dough Creations when he wrote 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.'" -Michael Ellenberger If you're not from the Chicago suburbs and you don't run NCAA D3 track and field you've probably never heard of Cookie Dough Creations. Located in the lovely Naperville aka Naperthrill, IL, this little shop boasts the combo of my two favorite desserts ever, cookie dough and ice cream. At this shop, you order one (or more, if you are brave) scoops of ice cream and one (or more, if you have the courage of a gladiator) scoops of cookie dough. They have a wide variety of flavors of both, including Zanzibar chocolate ice cream (a favorite of mine) and Zoreo ice cream (which is Zanzibar chocolate ice cream with Oreos and marshmallow). The shop is really narrow so I couldn't get the whole wall in the pic, but it says "you can't say no to cookie dough" Seriously, when you eat this stuff the first th

I'm always on a quest to try new ice cream flavors, but sometimes you just have to go back to an old favorite.  After the avocado fro yo fiasco of 2014, my adventurous flame was a bit dampened.  When I when grocery shopping last weekend, Rainbow was having  a buy two get one free on B&J's and Haagen-Dazs.  This cemented my decision to buy a pint of Haagen-Dazs White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle along with two new-to-me flavors that will be making appearances here shortly. To me, White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, along with Caramel Cone, are Haagen-Dazs two standout flavors.  White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle is described as White chocolate ice cream swirled with tangy raspberry ribbons and satisfying chunks of chocolate fudge truffles. The first few times I've tried this flavor I didn't realize that the ice cream was white chocolate flavored, I thought there would be chunks of white chocolate and was kind of disappointed that I never got any.  Reading help

So I wasn't initially going to blog about this. But then a friend asked me what I thought of the new Ben and Jerry's Make Your Own Core Sundae and I talked to her about the one I had for like 10 minutes.  She looked a me like, "Lizzy, get a life" and I thought to myself (to quote Madeline) "This is the life that I have chosen." Last Friday Brett and I went to Ben and Jerry's on the Delmar Loop. I had been really excited about the make your own core sundae and new I had to get one. They put two different flavors of ice cream and the core of your choosing all in one container and top it with whipped cream. What could be better than that? As a chocolate love I KNEW I wanted to get the hot fudge core. And I thought, "What a wonderful way to may two not-so-chocolate flavors more chocolatey?!" So I decided I wanted cookie dough and Americone Dream with the hot fudge core. I strode up the the counter confident in my decision and placed my order. The

EVERYBODY GET EXCITED!! First vegan ice cream review of the blog!!! This is for you Bronwyn, I hope you're reading. If you not I guess that shows you don't really care about my important life endeavors. So first a story. I really wanted Trader Joe's baked tofu because its the best thing ever. So I went to TJs to do most of my shopping, but TJ's doesn't have a good non dairy ice cream selection. Like seriously their vanilla soy milk ice cream just tastes like soy ice cream with an after taste of vanilla. Which maybe that's you jam, but ehhh not mine. So I stopped by Schnucks' after I went to TJs to get some good non dairy ice cream. I don't shop at Schnucks' often, so I went to where the non dairy ice cream usually is, by the normal ice cream . Like, where it should be.  But it WASN'T THERE. The only non dairy thing was some sorbet, which is not what I was looking for. I paced up and down and up and down the ice cream isle for like 15 minutes an

I am mad.  I am furious.  I am seething.  You are probably wondering, dear reader, why I am so angry, what put me in this funk, and I will tell you.  It was avocado frozen yogurt.  "But you love avocado," you, dear reader, might say.  And I do, I truly do, which is why this abomination, this disgrace to both avocados and frozen yogurt has me so riled up. I mentioned in my intro post that I am a frequent customer of the Minneapolis frozen yogurt chain Yogurt Lab, and one of the reasons I go so often is that they purported to offer an avocado flavor.  I was rightly excited by this, and every time I went to Yogurt Lab I did a prayer to the god of all things frozen that THIS would be the day they had the avocado flavor. When I walked in on Sunday, lo and behold, there was the sign declaring that, with the pull of a lever I could fill my cardboard cup with delicious avacado-y goodness.  Without hesitation I strode to the dispenser and and let flow what I hoped would be the sw

Cardamom.  Oh, cardamom, how I love thee.  I will seriously buy anything with cardamom in it.  For a while last fall Starbucks was making a Vanilla Cardamom Latte and I bought SO many of them and I don't even really like Starbucks. My favorite way to make blueberry pie is to make the normal filling and then add cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom, so when when I saw 'Spiced Berry Crumble Gelato infused with cardamom flavor' at Target I knew I was bringing that guy home with me.  I paid $4.99 for 30 Fl Oz (a pint is 16 Fl Oz), so this was cheaper ice cream than a B&J or H-D pint. Archer Farms is a (generally pretty yummy) Target brand.  Per the container: Sometimes the best things in life are the simplest, Gelato, Italian ice cream, is hard to resist.  Imported from Italy, Archer Farms Spiced Berry Crumble Gelato is made with alternating dollops of berry-flavored gelato and cardamom-flavored gelato.  A ribbon of berry sauce runs throughout the checkerboard of flavo