The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Kyle and I made a trip to Trader Joe's last week specifically to pick up ice cream.  Being obsessed with peppermint ice cream, I obviously snagged a quart of the Peppermint Joe Joe's Ice Cream.  This is described as We believe that you can never have enough ice cream, so we blended two flavors together in our Peppermint Joe-Joe's Ice Cream. One portion consists of rich and creamy vanilla ice cream mixed with our signature Candy Cane Joe-Joe's cookie chunks.  The other portion consists of peppermint ice cream swirled with dark chocolate fudge.  Together thees two flavors make one memorable holiday ice cream. I was really excited about the concept of mixing two different but complementary peppermint ice creams together; it's a new twist on peppermint that I hadn't seen before. The peppermint half was a little disappointing.  The peppermint base was so-so, about what you would expect from a mid-range peppermint ice cream.  The dark chocolate fudge s...

Woe is me! I've had to review sooooo many Haagen-Dazs flavors recently.  That's what happens when your local grocery store has a 3 for $9 sale on Haagen-Dazs pints.  (If you didn't pick up on it, this is sarcasm.  If you didn't know it was sarcasm, you probably don't know me.) Haagen-Dazs produces their Peppermint Bark ice cream every year beginning around Thanksgiving.  I'm glad I was alone in the ice cream aisle when I saw this on shelves for the first time this year because I let out a whoop of joy!  I love this stuff so much.  The blurb about this flavor from the Haagen-Dazs website reads Celebrate the season with our rendition of this holiday classic.  Rich white chocolate ice cream is blended with crunchy chocolately peppermint bark and peppermint candy pieces. I love the purple Limited Edition packaging!  I am a whole-hearted white chocolate lover.  White chocolate is a divisive flavor, but I think a lot of people who dislik...

Ciao Bella Gelato is one of those brands I've seen around in stores a bit, but I haven't heard much about it, good or bad. I've seen it at Whole Foods, and usually when I am at Whole Foods, I am on a specific mission, and I'm not buying ice cream with whimsy. And Madeline, in fact reviewed this exact flavor about a year ago, which I had completely forgotten about. However, right now I am visiting Brett for Thanksgiving break. When he shopped for food before my arrival, of course he bought some ice cream and decided to pick up this flavor. First, a bit about Ciao Bella Gelato. Ciao Bella started as a scoop shop in Little Italy in New York City in 1983. The main man of Ciao Bella is Danilo Zecchin, a chef who grew up in Torino, Italy. From browsing the Ciao Bella website, I think Danilo gets me. Some of their gelato flavors include Alba Hazelnut Caffe, Bourbon Caramel Chocolate, Brown Sugar Caramel, and Chocolate Mascarpone. They also have a much more extensive sor...

You can't go wrong with a little chocolate on chocolate action!  Haagen-Dazs really capitalized on this principle with Chocolate Chocolate Chip: Our chocolate ice cream is the perfect combination of pure, sweet, cream, fine cocoa, and chocolate chips.  Truly a decadent ice cream experience. Sorry for the shitty pic quality, I ate the entire pint in one sitting, so didn't have too many opportunities for pictures. I'm kind of surprised by this description.  Sometimes the Haagen-Dazs flavor description writer can be a bit wacky, and I thought this flavor was ripe for a colorful description.  Alas, it was not to be. This ice cream was just what I needed this week.  Melt your stress away with CHOCOLATE!  I know in the past I have complained about not really liking Haagen-Dazs' chocolate base, but it was well utilized and delicious in this flavor.  It was a light and sweet chocolate, but not overly sugary.  Despite the lightness, there was a...

Pumphouse Creamery is a local ice cream scoop shop in Minneapolis.  It's a bit far away from where I live, so it's a bit hard to pop over for a scoop of ice cream.  Also, they only retail their ice cream in quarts not pints, so it's a bit of an investment to pick up a container.  I finally caved and bought a pint of Mint Chocolate Chunk.  This is such a classic flavor and super appropriate for winter.  I thought I couldn't go wrong.  That was not the case. I got this ice cream home, cracked it open, and was accosted by a whiff of my arch nemesis, mint extract.  Mint extract is not actually that bad, and can be really good if done well.  It imparts a more spicy, refreshing mint flavor than fresh mint.  The astringency can work really well, but that was not the case here.  It was too minty and overpowered the rest of the flavors.  Also, the mintiness never let up.  It was just mint, mint, mint all over the place! The text...

This post is sort of a reader request, minus the reader part. Maybe. It would be super exciting if ther person were now a reader of this blog! Not too long ago, I was getting my hair cut and I noticed my hair dresser had a tattoo of a cupcake on her arm, so I asked her about it. She talked my ear off about cupcakes for the next 10 minutes and apologized. She was like, wow I could talk about cupcakes and desserts all day, but most people stop caring after the first 2 minutes. I was like, girl, I understand your struggle. I write an ice cream blog, talking about ice cream way longer than my listener would like me to is the story of my life. By the end of the hair cut, she recommended I check out Ghurtie's Frozen Yoghurt in Coralville. Ghurtie's a bit of a drive from my house, so it would need to be quite good for me to make it a regular event. So how does it stack up? I'll use my 8-step froyo shop evaluation process to find out. 1) The variety of the flavors: is there a g...

A few months ago when I reviewed Haagen-Dazs Orchard Peach sorbet, two events occurred. First, I was reminded that the frozen-sugar-water creation that is sorbet is wonderful. Second, a bunch of you readers told me I should try and review more Haagen-Dazs sorbet products. I reviewed, and loved the lemon, but hadn't, until now, obviously, been able to find the mango flavor my friend, Christy, recommended. This description of this flavor reads We blended juicy, tropical mangos into a smooth puree to create a refreshing treat with sweet fruit intensity . The first bite of this sorbet was fantastic. It tasted like the kind of mango you eat while standing over the sink because no amount of napkins could or should control the juice dribbling all over your face and hands. So perfect. Mangos, when perfectly ripe like, this are the most carefree fruit. You can't eat a juice dribbling mango in your lunch at work or school. You can't eat a juice dribbling mango in a rush to ge...

I REALLY do not eat enough Haagen-Dazs gelato company.  I tend to write them off because, well, I think of them as an ice cream company and not a gelato company.  Every time I try a new Haagen-Dazs gelato I kick myself for not eating it more often. The latest flavor I have for you, dearest reader, is Cappuccino.  This is described on the Haagen-Dazs website as Bold and complex, our cappuccino gelato beautifully blends cappuccino and sweet cream gelato. The addition of sweet cream gelato is nothing short of inspired.  Wowzer.  This is what coffee ice cream/gelato has been missing it's whole life, and I love coffee ice cream! The first bite of gelato is a wallop coffee and sweet, sweet cream.  The sweet cream gelato is intensely sweet, but delicate enough that it's not overwhelmingly sugary.  The cappuccino/coffee gelato is rich and smooth giving some much needed body to the flavor. I'm sure either Lizzy or I have described 'kid coffee'...

The best part about traveling is ice cream. Seeing family and friends is cool or whatever, but nothing gets me quite as jazzed up as trying out another city's local scoop shops. The other weekend I visited Brett in his new home in Cambridge, MA. The week leading up to the visit I would text him and say, "What are our plans for the weekend? Where are we going to get ice cream?" Of course, most people don't put as much time and emotional labor into pursuing ice cream, so I ended up doing an investigation of local scoop shops all on my own. I was incredibly pleased to discover Brett lives close to a scoop shop considered by many to be the best ice cream in Boston! After drooling, and of course, agonizing, over their flavor list for a week, we made the trek with my friend Lizzie, who also lives in the Boston area, over to Toscanini's on Saturday afternoon. The line for ice cream was almost out the door, but luckily, there were many employees and the line moved quickly...

Oh, Sweet Science, why do you insist on making the world a better place by making such delicious ice cream?  Because when the zombie apocalypse comes we'll just be that much sadder that we can't eat your ice cream.  Waaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! I worry a lot about a zombie invasion, specifically about the ice cream situation that would ensue. Continuing their tradition of splendiferous seasonal flavors, Sweet Science is offering Pumpkin Five Spice this fall.  Their description is Roasted pumpkin is combined with honey and five spice powder - as close to pumpkin pie as you can get. So I didn't realize five-spice powder is an actual and spent all the time I was eating the ice cream I was trying to guess what the five spices were.  I came up with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, anise and ......  I got some and was way off on others.  Apparently five-spice powder is actually made with cinnamon, anise, fennel, Szechuan peppercorn, and cloves. This was definitely the...

If you couldn't tell, I used the last of my Haagen-Dazs coupons recently. I had received one a few months ago, and I waited until only a few days before it expired to use it, in hopes I wouldn't get any more. I decided to mix it up and use it at the other HyVee in Iowa City, which has a larger ice cream selection. My patience and arduous trek to the other side of the city was rewarded. In addition to the Banana Rum Jam flavor I found, I found this fantastic and difficult to find flavor, Green Tea! I'm going to begin this post by being upfront and honest. I don't like green tea. I don't hate it, but I wouldn't chose it over chai or mint tea. Also when it comes to the stereotypical Japanese ice cream flavors, I would much rather have red bean ice cream! I also know nothing about green tea. So take this review for what it's worth. Which is probably not much. However, I've only seen this flavor at one other store, so I decided I couldn't pass up the op...

Alas!! I have done it!!! I have complete the epic, months-long quest to try all of the Haagen-Dazs Artisan Collection! After a treacherous trek across town to the HyVee on the other side of town, losing hope while wandering the maze-like, only slightly-different layout of this grocery store, I finally found it. The Banana Rum Jam flavor, the only remaining missing link. The completion of this quest will bring eternal fame and glory to the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog!! And what I mean by eternal fame and glory is being able to say we are not the actual worst ice cream bloggers out there. Most other ice cream blogs had tried all of the artisan collection flavors months and months ago. You know, like, when they were still new. However, Madeline can't find the Applewood Smoked Caramel Almond flavor (which I did when I first moved to Iowa City) and I couldn't find the Banana Rum Jam (which Madeline did back in May).  And what I mean by couldn't find, is hadn't look exte...

I'm well on my way to trying all of Edy's Frozen Custard offerings, which have run the gamut from terrible to pretty tasty.  The latest flavor I have for you is Snickerdoodle, which falls on the pretty tasty end of the spectrum.  Edy's describes this flavor as Snickerdoodle cookie pieces and cinnamon graham swirls are mixed into vanilla frozen custard creating an extra thick and creamy version of the classic cookie flavor. The vanilla base was pretty good.  Nothing to write home about, but good enough not to distract and bring down the other elements of the flavor.  It was very very dense and thick, much more so than normal ice cream.  Edy's did not pull punches when it comes to the texture of their frozen custard. There were so many type of cinnamon flavor going on in this custard!  The cinnamon graham swirl had a milder, sweeter cinnamon-sugar thing going on.  I didn't really taste the 'graham' flavor, but I guess the cinnamon flavor was th...

I'm not going to play around with this blog post. This pint of gelato might be the biggest let down of 2015. There was so much ice cream blogger hype around this flavor. In fact, after eating this flavor, Dubba of On Second Scoop said it was his new favorite Talenti flavor and possibly his favorite peanut flavor. I remember reading his review and getting so excited to find a pint and chow down. Unfortunately, as you will read, I think I got a bit jipped. My HyVee has this flavor, and I finally got around to buying a pint. The description of this flavor on the Talenti website reads We started with our salted peanut gelato and added in large, halved, roasted peanuts and a swirl of salted caramel, because someone else needed to be invited to this peanut party . So basically this flavor should be a PayDay candy bar embodied in gelato form. (Side note: Dear Talenti flavor description writer, please marry me?) Hullo peanuts! Mmmmk. So I didn't read the descri...