The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Ahhh, Magnum, you have a special place in my heart.  I first tried Magnum ice cream bars during a summer I spent in Morocco after I graduated from college.  The bars were sold at little street vendors and typically went for around $2.50-3 USD a piece.  This was a little expensive, but sometimes you just needed some damn good ice cream! In the States, a box of 3 full-size Magnum bars goes for about $4 (I think).  The Magnum Minis come 6 to a box for about the same price.  At the grocery store, I opted to try the Magnum Mini Gold?! (also, can we all please start using the interrobang ‽) I was a little afraid to try a 'mini' size, as I obviously want to eat as much ice cream as possible at all times, but I took the plunge.  I was actually pleasantly surprised by the size.  These were maybe a half-inch longer than my palm and as wide as half of my palm.  Respectable! I realize this picture gives you no idea of scale. Magnum Gold?! is describ...

No, I did not learn to speak Italian. But I did eat some Italian Gelato. This fancy Italian brand, Selezione Siviero Maria, can be found at Schnucks'! What the name means is Selections of Siviero Maria which is the name of the wife of the founder of the company. This company has a couple of other brands of gelato with different names. I think this one is supposed to be the classy brand of this company, hence the selections . Class at it's finest. You also feel really fancy while eating this ice cream because the packaging is all in Italian so you actually have no idea what you are eating. Of course, when my dad and I sat down to have some of this last night, we were wondering what exactly the whole Bourbon thing was all about. We knew that vanilla had something to do with vanilla in a solution of alcohol and water, so we though maybe Italians used Bourbon as opposed to rum or something. But why would Italians use an American alcohol to make their vanilla? Well they don...

On my most recent trip to the grocery store, a new limited edition Haagen Dazs flavor caught my eye.  I was pretty confused because I'm pretty sure banana split used to be one of Haagen Dazs' core flavors.  Maybe it wasn't selling well and they are trying to phase it out?  Who knows. My past experience with Haagen Dazs limited edition flavors has been so-so.  A few years ago they had a Spiced Caramel Biscuit flavor which is up there on my favorite flavors of all time list.  They also had an exclusive (not sure of the difference between exclusive and limited edition) flavor called Spiced Peach Crumble.  I guess Haagen Dazs does 'spiced' really well.  Last year I tried the Peanut Butter Pie flavor and was underwhelmed.  Peanut butter pie is one of the most amazing and easy to make desserts of all time, so it should be totally amazing in ice cream form, but I found this flavor to be kind of bland.  One thing I do love is the limited edition p...

Dearest reader, I have to begin this blog entry with an apology. I went to an ice cream shop and I didn't take any pictures of the ice cream I ate. I am so sorry, you'll just have to put up with my writing with no pictures to make it actually interesting. Right now I am in the Denver area with my dad visiting his family. After what was supposed to be a four hour hike to the top of James Peak turned into a seven hour bushwhacking adventure when our trail was covered in snow, obviously we were all due for some ice cream. On our way back to Denver we stopped in the town of Idaho Springs to find an ice cream shop. We spotted the Georgetown Valley Candy Company, which also serves ice cream, and decided this was the perfect place to stop. The Georgetown Valley Candy Company has two locations, the one we stopped and one in Georgetown, another mountain town, hence the name. I looked at their Facebook page to try to find some pictures of their ice cream since I didn't take any, bu...

In honor of reaching 1000 page views, Lizzy and I will be (trying to) sample ice creams suggested by you, our readers.  The first suggestion I was able to try out came from my friend Eliot.  He suggested both green tea ice cream and red bean ice cream which he tried at the Missouri Botanical Garden's Japanese Festival. On my most recent trip to Izzy's, I had the opportunity to try some green tea ice cream.  The description on Izzy's website reads The Chinese have served as living proof of green tea's mystical healing powers for centuries.  It seems as if something in those tealeaves has the ability to make the weak strong and the meek brave.  Green Tea ice cream, made with only the finest Matcha Green Tea from St. Paul's own TeaSource also lays claim to this ability.  Results guaranteed within six weeks. So, can we all agree that this description is really weird and move on? About the ice cream:  This had a really pretty green color.  It ...

The week I spent visiting Brett was spend half at his parents' house in Wayland and the half at their house on Cape Cod, in West Dennis. The number one spot in West Dennis to hang on a weekend night is apparently the homemade ice cream shop called, The Sundae School. Apparently it gets so crowded in the middle of the summer that they hire someone just to direct traffic in the parking lot!! Brett and I visited both Friday and Saturday night. With a name like Sundae School I was expecting really punny names of ice cream. None were that punny but they did have creative ones. However, on the first night the flavor, Shark's Tooth, stuck out to me, so I asked the scooper what in the world such a flavor was. Shark's Tooth is Black Raspberry with White Chocolate Chips. This is where the confusion began. I have always assumed that black raspberry was sort of like blue raspberry, as in not a real thing. However, when Brett said that this flavor was his sister's favorite because...

First it was Izzy's ice cream in Minneapolis and now Lizzy's ice cream in the Boston area! People with names ending in "izzy" must just know what is up with ice cream. This week, I visited my boyfriend, Brett, in Boston. For Christmas two years ago he got me a t-shirt from Lizzy's ice cream. I was like, "Sweet! I like ice cream and this is my name! How cool!! ...But I've never had their ice cream... How can I rep their brand without knowing if it's any good." So I've never worn the t-shirt out of the house. And now the day finally came for me to try the ice cream shop sharing my name. Look at their adorable cow logo! Before I left STL for Boston, I checked out their flavors online. Two jumped out at me right away: Grapenuts and Chocolate Orgy. Grapenuts are just such a lovely weird little cereal, but super healthy! I was excited to see how they would turn out in an ice cream. Although a description wasn't on the website, Choco...

Sometimes you just need an ice cream classic.  I was feeling that way this week and decided to go with Haagen-Dazs Rocky Road, described as Velvety swirls of marshmallow, roasted almonds and our signature chocolate ice cream come together to elevate a classic ice cream. I don't have much to say, other than to agree with the description on the pint.  The chocolate ice cream was good (but not great).  What really made this special was the marshmallow swirl.  It was a big, thick, gooey, melty swirl of marshmallow.  It was basically like a swirl of marshmallow fluff (aka nectar of the gods.  If you've never had a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich aka a fluffernutter, go jump off a cliff we can't be friends anymore).  Normally the marshmallow in store-brand rocky road (the ice cream of my childhood!) is similar in texture to the ice cream base. Not the greatest picture ever, but you can see how liquidy the marshmallow is. The verdic...

So far on the blog I haven't reviewed any non premium ice cream brands. I'm living at home this summer, and growing up, ice cream that came in paper boxes was standard. I have many memories of shivering in the freezer section of Shop 'N' Save looking wistfully at Edy's while my dad would pick out Prairie Farms Moose Tracks or Mint Chip again . So I guess in college, I rebelled. Nothing but Ben and Jerry's and Haagen Dazs for me. Now that I've graduated, maybe I've matured out of this rebellious phase and I'm once again content with letting my dad pick out Prairie Farms ice cream for me. Prairie Farms is a Midwest dairy cooperative, so my coastal friends don't have the wonderful memories of buying a milk chug from the Prairie Farms vending machine after a sports practice, and of course, as the name implies, chugging it and then feeling quite a bit sick after. This was a frequent practice of my high school track team and I always bought the choco...

The Mall of America is a large mall located in the 'burbs south of Minneapolis proper.  According to Wikipedia, the mall of America was the second-largest mall in terms of area and largest in terms of number of stores in America when it opened in 2003.  Until yesterday, I had successfully avoided Mall of America, but Kyle, l'boyfriend, was insistent that we go. The mall itself was totally weird.  On the first floor, there is an amusement park, Nickelodeon Universe, with roller coasters and everything.  The lego store, which had humongous lego sculptures was pretty cool, and there was an American Girl store which I would have obsessed over as a child.  Other than that it was just ... a mall.  A huge, poorly lit mall with unfinished, cement floors. Of course I took note of many of the ice cream places in the mall.  The first one I was wan Haagen-Dazs.  I got really excited about this, because the last time I went to a Haagen-Dazs scoop shop was...

As I mentioned before, I consider Caramel Cone to be one of Haagen-Dazs all-star flavors (along with White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle).  Caramel Cone is described as A creamy crunchy composition of smooth caramel ice cream, crunchy chocolaty-covered cone pieces and rich caramel swirls . Pints gone wild.  Topless, get it? I think the reason this ice cream is so good is the caramel ice cream.  Haagen-Dazs really excels when they make the base flavor something subtle, caramel in this case, that is not chocolate or vanilla.  The white chocolate ice cream base in White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle is what really makes that flavor.  The other good one I can think of off the top of my head is Dulce de Leche, which I think is the caramel ice cream again.  Haagen-Dazs, more than any other brand I have tried, has nailed the subtle base flavor/mix-in balance. The caramel ice cream of Caramel Cone is the typical smooth, dense Haagen-Dazs texture.  The ca...

Here is my take on our St. Louis Ice Cream Extravaganza. As Lizzy mentioned, our first stop was newly opened Jilly's Ice Cream Bar.  On their website they state that "Moaning out loud is totally acceptable."  That definitely happened.  Lizzy and I shared the Lucky Charms and Gooey Butter Cake flavors.  Lizzy covered the Lucky Charms flavor pretty well, so I will talk about the Gooey Butter Cake ice cream.  Officially named Gooey Butter Brownie Batter, this is described as Gooey Butter Cake ice cream, Gooey Butter Cake chunks, vanilla cake morsels, brownie batter swirl. This ice cream is totally rad, and is something I had been waiting my whole life for.  In fact, a few months ago, I posted a facebook status about how awesome gooey butter cake ice cream would be. For those not in the know,  gooey butter cake  is a St. Louis dessert delicacy.  It was supposedly invented when a baker included too much butter in a recipe for yellow ...

After leaving Minneapolis, Madeline spent ONE WHOLE DAY in the lovely Lou before heading back to Minneapolis. Obviously we knew we would have to make this day an ice cream extravaganza. As I mentioned a little while ago, Jilly's Cupcakes was opening an ice cream bar. There has been a lot of buzz on St. Louis social media about the place. After the flavor list came out and it included My Lucky Charms as a June Chef/Fan Favorite, I knew we had to hit this place up in our ice cream extravaganza. I was obsessed with Lucky Charms as a kid. My love for Lucky Charms went beyond just being my favorite cereal. Seriously, the best Christmas gift I ever got was a special edition box of Lucky Charms that let you color in the box yourself. Look at the cool decor at Jilly's! Ice cream scoops! At Jilly's Ice Cream bar we got two scoops for only $4.50, one of the My Lucky Charms and the other of Gooey Butter Brownie Batter. The My Lucky Charms flavor is described as: Lucky Charms C...

So Madeline  and I have gotten a bit out of order here at the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog. A while ago, dear reader, you may remember that we tried to make ice cream and failed. We told you that we would be making popsicles with the peach ginger ice cream base. We made and ate quite a few of them days ago and just haven't gotten our lazy butts around to writing about them. I'm not sure if we started at the bottom, but now we're here; the peach pops. We poured the peach pop base into little paper Dixie Cups, and put them into the freezer. We walked to Madeline's handy dandy corner market Joe's to see if they had popsicle sticks. The plan was to wait until the pops were slightly frozen to put in the popsicle sticks so they would stay up right. At Joe's there were no popsicle sticks but they had plastic utensils which we thought would work just fine. After much debate we chose to use spoons rather than forks so we wouldn't stab ourselves in the mouth. Typically,...

I also ate Izzy's Ice Cream! I went to Izzy's for the first time in the week following finals.  This was a good week for ice cream; I went to Sebastian Joe's and Izzy's for the first time. When looking at the flavors online before I went (because obviously I would do this) there were several I was really excited about including Cereal Milk and Hot Brown Sugar, so when I saw Hot Brown Sugar was available I knew that this flavor would be mine.  Immediately.  Because I was so excited about this flavor I failed to read anything about anything on their menu, so I didn't realize I would have to choose a flavor for my Izzy scoop.  I panicked and chose Vanilla. The Vanilla wasn't bad, but it wasn't an outstanding vanilla either.  I'm not too upset because I don't typically order vanilla at a scoop shop. Now on to the good stuff.  Er mah gerd the Hot Brown Sugar was the most amazing thing ever.  I want to eat this every day!  Here is the descriptio...

Madeline and I just went HAM with ice cream this week. Thursday we went to Izzy's Ice Cream. They are known for their crazy flavors. They have so many, including a cereal milk flavor which I need  to try. Unfortunately they didn't have that flavor the day we went. Izzy's is also known for their "Izzy scoop." Basically the Izzy scoop is a little baby scoop you can add to your ice cream for just a little bit more. I think this is a really cool concept. I always want to try as many flavors as possible but sometimes you don't want to eat enough ice cream to try a zillion flavors. We met my friend Bea there, who is from Minneapolis and just got back to the states after studying abroad, it was really nice to see her! This is Bea's cone. She got lemon buttermilk and salted caramel and loved them both! I sampled the Thai Iced Tea flavor they had as a "mystery flavor". Not really sure what they meant by mystery flavor but whatevs. The flavor is al...