The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Wow Madeline and I are literally turning into the same person. We are both PhD students, runners, ice cream bloggers (duh), for a while we had the same hair cut, we look alike, talk alike, and now we are reviewing the same ice cream at the same time. Freaky. I promise we're not twins, but at this rate we might as well be. Lizzy's take: When I bought my first of the new Ben & Jerry's Dairy Free flavors, I got a coupon from HyVee for $.75 off two more pints. I've been waiting to make a bit more of a dent in the New Orleans flavors to make room in the freezer for my roommates to actually utilize the space that is rightfully theirs. Having done so, I went out recently and bought the Coffee Caramel Fudge and Chunky Monkey Dairy Free! The description of this flavor reads Coffee non-dairy frozen dessert with fudge chunks & caramel swirl . This is the non-dairy flavor I was most excited about. It is the only one that is just a dairy-free version of

Okay Dearest Readers, get ready for what may be one of the best posts of all time. Yesterday, I walked to Cold Stone with my friends and fellow Anthropology graduate students, Emma, Charlie, and Scott. We decided to get ice cream there because the Math graduate students at Iowa were holding a fundraiser! And what could be better than eating ice cream while supporting fellow graduate students? Nothing!  I decided to get the Not So Vanilla, a new Cold Stone Creation. And while you will see that this creation was absolutely delicious, it might have been a bit of a mistake to order it. You see, the math graduate students were making  the creations for the fundraiser. As they are not Cold Stone employees, they were having a hard enough time making all of the creations normally on the menu, and then I asked them to make a new one! They must have little descriptions of each creation posted behind the counter for employees to read, but they did not seem to have them for the new creations. T

The Royal Blizzards came to my local Dairy Queen (and others, I'm sure) about a month before they went live in Dairy Queen's across the nation and were listed on the DQ website.  At the time I couldn't figure out why DQ's take on the idea of 'core' ice creams were called Royal Blizzards, but I think their release was meant to coincide with the Queen of England's 90th birthday, which just feels really random. Today I tried the Royal New York Cheesecake Blizzard, described as Cheesecake pieces and graham blended with creamy vanilla soft serve then filled with a perfectly paired strawberry center. I have a terrible cold and can barely taste anything, but I'll do my best with this review.  Also, thanks boyfriend for getting me sick during the busiest week of the semester.  I feel like death and just want to lay in bed and watch Netflix, but realistically I'll probably work for 10 or 11 hours a day for the next two weeks. PhD problems. Wh

Mmk folks, this is going to be a short and sweet review! But first, for those of us that aren't super familiar with Louisiana, what in the heck is a Ponchatoula strawberry? Well, Ponchatoula is a small city in Louisiana that is called the "strawberry capital of the world." There is a major strawberry festival there every year which is the largest event in the state behind Mardi Gras! The description of this flavor is A Smooth & Creamy Strawberry Ice Cream Bursting with The Freshest Ponchatoula Strawberries. This wasn't the most strawberry-y flavored strawberry ice cream I'd ever eaten. But I wouldn't say this was a bad thing. This flavor was more going for a strawberries and cream vibe, and here they executed well. The best part about this flavor was the buttermilk. It's not listed in the description, but if you peak at the ingredients, you'll see buttermilk listed. The slight tanginess that the buttermilk added made this flavor extra f

A few years ago, the Ben & Jerry's Target exclusive line underwent a renaming.  Things got a little confusing, and I thought I had tried all of the Target exclusive flavors, but I recently realized I never tried the chocolate and peanut butter flavor Peanut Butter World.  This ice cream is Milk Chocolate ice cream with peanut buttery swirls and chocolate cookie swirls. Is there anything better than a chocolate heavy Ben & Jerry's flavor?  No, no there is not.  The base is perfectly rich, and there is a lovely peanut butter undertone present in every bite. The peanut butter swirl is the same as that in several other Ben and Jerry's flavors.  It has a good balance of salty and sweet, leaning slightly to the salty side.  This gives a nice depth of flavor to the very sweet milk chocolate base.  The peanut butter swirl is slightly crunchy and melts down in to a smooth, viscous, sticky texture. The chocolate swirl reminded me a bit of the choc

While Iowa and Missouri have their many differences, I've recently discovered that, like Missouri, Iowa isn't into this whole spring  business and has decided to skip straight to summer. And by summer I mean weather with highs over 75 degrees. And yes I know I'm lame, but I'm a runner, so is it too early to be complaining about the heat? I'm really only partly kidding. Either way, Dane's Dairy, a drive-through soft-serve ice cream spot in south Iowa City has opened for the season! I totally failed you, Dearest Readers, by not making it over to Dane's before it closed for the fall/winter, but don't you worry, I am going to more than make up for my mistake this summer. This past Saturday I went to Dane's Dairy with my friends, Emma and Charlie. Dane's is absolutely the most adorable soft serve ice cream shop you will ever go to. There are amazing little farm animal statues everywhere and the side of the building is painted with fun pict

While this is not my first experience with Jeni's, this is the first time I have purchased a pint of Jeni's because, fuck, they cost $10 a pop.  I'll gladly pay that much for a small, local brand (hipster alert), and I get that Jeni's whole schtick is being a Certified B Corporation, fair trade, and grass-fed cows, blah blah blah, but ten dollars still feels like a lot.  Oh, and about the whole grass-fed cows thing, I think it is wonderful, but seriously every. single. one. of their flavor descriptions in their scoop shops mentions it.  Like, we get it. Ugh, sorry, I'm in a stuck-on-a-math-problem mood and I'm taking it out on Jeni's. My local Whole Foods recently started carrying Jeni's and Brown Butter Almond Brittle was the most interesting sounding flavor so I picked up a pint.  This flavor is Brown-butter-almond candy crushed into a buttery cream scented with honey. Agghhhhhhh, why is an ice cream scented with honey, but not flavored wi

I am super excited to write this review. Months ago I had my first flavor from Luna & Larry's and loved it. After I wrote my review about the flavor, I was contacted by someone form Luna & Larry's and they sent me two coupons for free Luna & Larry's products. As soon as the coupons arrived I rushed right out and used one to get this pint for free! However, a few days later I was bombarded with a shipment of New Orleans ice cream. In the midst of trying those flavors, trying the new Ben & Jerry's and Talenti's, this flavor got a bit lost in the back of my freezer. But, when I finally got around to trying this flavor, I loved it! This flavor is a plain cappuccino flavored base. Upon first bite, I tasted coconut a bit more than coffee. But as I kept eating the coconut flavor faded a bit and the coffee flavor got stronger. In total my friend, James, explained the flavor experience best when he said it tasted like a coconut flavored coffee. Not the

Prepare your self for a disastrous tale of my failings as an ice cream blogger!  On a recent trip to Tim and Tom's I saw a new-to-me brand.  (I feel like a broken record saying that.  I promise I buy ice cream other places too.  In fact, I'm planning a 3-stop ice cream buying extravaganza this weekend.)   Choctal specializes in single-origin chocolate and vanilla ice creams.  And that's it.  Chocolate.  And Vanilla. I picked up a pint of Choctal Mexican Vanilla, described as The complex sweet and spicy characteristic of classic Mexican vanilla is enhanced with the slightest added touch of cinnamon, unlocking a hidden note of coconut on the back of the palate. Here's how I fail as an ice cream blogger; I only picked up one flavor.  I feel like the real draw of Choctal ice creams is in the comparison.  They would be perfect as the feature of a sophisticated, adult, fancy-dress, ice cream sundae party where everyone stands around and discusses the floral or woo

The post you've all been waiting for! You've probably been wondering what ice cream I ate the day before the Boston Marathon. Brett and I decided to go back to Picco, which we visited last time I was in Boston, because it was so good! When we went and met up with my friends Lizzie and Naomi, Picco was super crowded, as was just about every restaurant in the Boston area. So we order our ice cream from the counter to-go and walked around Boston Commons with it! There were lots of tasty flavors being offered that day, and most of them ones that I didn't try last time. I've been in a coconut mood lately (mostly eating coconut curries and other coconut desserts) so I went with the coconut chip. Also spring means time for awesome fruity flavors, so I decided on raspberry chip! So pretty! The base of coconut chip was strongly coconut flavored and quite sweet! As Brett described Picco's ice cream, "their flavors are what they say they are!" Picco's f

This post is a review of Talenti's Peanut Butter Pretzel aka my pre-pre-Boston Marathon ice cream. To have a good race (more on whether or not that happened in a later post), you shouldn't really change too much about your routine leading up to the big day. So yes, when Brett and I went grocery shopping, we picked up ice cream. I grabbed Talenti's Peanut Butter Pretzel because I haven't seen that flavor around any Iowa stores yet. My grocery stores have gotten all the new Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs flavors, finally, but not all of the new Talenti ones yet. This is the first of their new (I guess really only new-ish) flavors I'm reviewing! Also finally  I am getting to a new flavor before Madeline did. HA! Take that. This flavor is described as This flavor is "life by peanut butter." As in, you have not lived until you try this peanut butter gelato with real peanut butter ribbons and peanut butter covered pretzels. And a little chocolate be

I recently found the brand NadaMoo! through Instagram and thought their branding was really cut. They make non-dairy, coconut frozen dessert.  I learned that my local Whole Foods recently started carrying the brand so I made a trip and picked up Cookies and Creme.  This flavor is Everyone's favorite flavor is now gluten free, but still just as crunchy! Blended with sweet creme, your taste buds will never guess you're eating a non-dairy dessert. Sorry, NadaMoo! but my taste buds were definitely discerning enough to guess I was eating a non-dairy dessert.  You inherently have to have a cream or sweet cream base for cookies and cream ice cream, and I just don't think it's the most appropriate flavor for non-dairy frozen dessert.  I mean, how can you replicate a cream base?  Either the base flavor (coconut, almond, cashew, etc ....) is too prominent or the base is too flavorless.  The NadaMoo! base had a slight undertone of coconut, but was pretty flavorless.

Whooooaaaaaaa dudes! I haven't reviewed an Edy's flavor in a looooooong time.  I heard rumors of a new frozen custard flavor so I went searching for it.  While I didn't find the new custard I was looking for, I couldn't resist taking home a container of Edy's Rolo, a new flavor for the brand.  Rolos are one of my favorite candies.  This ice cream is described as Rich and creamy vanilla ice cream with a caramel swirl and mini Rolo candy pieces. I had forgotten how soft Edy's ice cream is.  Like a fluffy down pillow!  The vanilla base was lightly flavored.  It was also very, very sweet without crossing into cloyingly sweet territory. The caramel swirls were very interesting.  They were also lightly flavored, but the caramel/vanilla combination tasted exactly like one of those cheap (but delicious!) cake cones.  My poor taste buds were so confused. Obviously the mini Rolos were great.  There were plenty of them, I got at least one every bite, someti

Seems like I'm on a kick of older Ben and Jerry's flavors lately.  As with Boston Cream Pie, which I recently reviewed  here , I have had Ben and Jerry's S'mores but never reviewed it.  This ice cream is described as Chocolate ice cream with fudge chunks, toasted marshmallow, and graham cracker swirls. Honestly, for 95% of the pint, if you would have told me this was a chocolate ice cream with fudge flakes and nothing else I would have believed you.  Then graham swirls just didn't stand out against the base, and there wasn't much of the marshmallow swirl. The base itself was fantastic.  It seemed a bit darker and richer than the chocolate base in some other Ben and Jerry's flavors.  The fudge flakes added a slightly more bitter element to the overall chocolate flavor profile. The marshmallow swirl was amazing, there just wasn't very much of it.  I think I got three mouthfuls in the half pint I ate. (I had to share this flavor with Kyle. L

I'm going to give you a little insight into the life of a graduate student. At 8:30 this past Sunday, my brain was pretty fried from doing work and I was caught up on reviews (for the most part). Basically I had nothing to do. I thought about just going to bed right then and there, but then I remembered I'm 24 years old, not 74. So instead I decided to go to Heyn's by myself, because YOLO. I live a wild life. Heyn's is a pretty small shop and all the seats were full, so I sat outside in the cool weather to eat my ice cream, that's how dedicated I am. I thought the lighting would be bad for pictures, but they turned out great! Well Heyn's was pretty popping, I guess I'm not the only Iowa City resident who decided to go crazy and get some delicious ice cream on a Sunday night. After sampling a couple of flavors I picked Key Lime Pie Cheesecake, which I had never seen offered before, and Chocoholic Delight. The Chocoholic Delight is described as Chocola