The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Alright, its time for my third review of the new Ben & Jerry's Non-Dairy line. I like the P.B. and Cookies and wasn't thrilled by the Coffee, Caramel, Fudge. How will Chocolate Fudge Brownie hold up? This flavor is described as Chocolate with Fudge Brownies . Now, it has been a long time since I've had the dairy version of Chocolate Fudge Brownie, so I went back and read my review of that flavor to prepare for writing this review. Sadly, the non-dairy version does not live up to the original. Now, I know the bast isn't going to taste the same. As I've said in my reviews of the other non-dairy flavors, the you can really taste the almond milk flavor in these bases, although less so in P.B. and Cookies. However, it is still disappointing that this flavor had so much prominent almond milk taste. It really just does not work for this ice cream. But putting that aside, even the rest of this flavor doesn't live up to the original. Look at th...

This past week I visited Dane's again! Dan's has a couple of different flavors of soft serve besides vanilla and chocolate. Last time I was there I got a Topsoil Surprise, which used vanilla soft serve, so I thought this time I would try one of the other flavors. I chose the strawberry, and got it in a medium cone. It was dark, so sorry the lighting is weird. The medium cone was the perfect size if you're in the mood for a standard dessert sized cone. Anything smaller would just be like a little snack, and any bigger you'd have to go in hungry. The strawberry soft serve was definitely on the sweet side, and kind of far from tasting like actually strawberries. It more reminded me of those strawberry wafer cookies (you know, the ones that come in chocolate and vanilla, too). It was also on the melty side, so I'm assuming they make the flavors like Conny's Cream Cone (or maybe just all soft serve places that have a lot of flavors) does, adding flavoring int...

You guys! Pecan Sticky Buns, Ben and Jerry's latest Wal-Mart exclusive was released MONTHS ago and I am just now getting around to reviewing it!  Let's just say the end of the semester was hellacious.  Also, during the past month I went to Wal-Mart twice specifically to look for this flavor and it was out of stock.  I went back and finally found a pint.  This flavor is Buttery brown sugar ice cream with pecans, sticky bun dough and a cream cheese frosting swirl. So let's get the obvious out of the way.  This sounds and tastes a lot like Ben and Jerry's Cinnamon Buns, but I think the cream cheese swirl and addition of pecans distinguishes it enough from Cinnamon Buns to justify releasing it as an exclusive flavor. The brown sugar base was very lightly flavored.  I could tell it wasn't a sweet cream base, but I don't know if I would have been able to identify it as brown sugar in a blind taste test.  Also, the other flavors were quite strong a...

It seems like Lizzy and I have been on a major chocolate and spice kick lately.  We've had Chocolate Cinnamon Pretzel at Sebastian Joe's and Thelma's Cayenne Chocolate Chip ice cream sandwich, and this week we also tried Mayan Chocolate, a new Destination Series flavor: The distinctive taste of our Mexican-inspired chocolate ice cream is balanced with a warming touch of cinnamon spice, rich fudge, and chocolate truffle chunks. The result is a deliciously complex flavor for the serious chocolate lover.  The chocolate base was your typical delicious and rich Haagen-Dazs chocolate.  Even though the cinnamon was only in the fudge swirl, hints of cinnamon bled out into the base as well.  This ice cream had one of the best cinnamon flavors I've ever tried.  Typically cinnamon falls into one of two camps: either sharp and spicy or warm and mellow, but this cinnamon danced somewhere in the middle of those two.  It wasn't particularly spicy, but was ve...

A while back Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's fame created the ice cream flavor Bernie's Yearning in support of Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.  The flavor was mint ice cream with a disk of chocolate covering the top meant to represent the wealth disparity between the wealthiest 1% of the nation and the rest of the county.  The idea is that you break up the hunk of chocolate into smaller pieces and distribute it throughout the pint, representing a redistribution of wealth!  This was not an official product, as a company can't endorse a presidential candidate, but Ben and Jerry, the people, not the company did have a give away of 50 pints of this flavor. Lizzy entered the drawing, but unfortunately wasn't selected. Ben and Jerry's new flavor, Empower Mint, pays tribute to the social mission of Bernie's Yearning.  This flavor is Peppermint ice cream with fudge brownies and fudge swirls. The blurb on the side of the pint re...

While Lizzy was visiting me for the ice cream run, we stopped at a grocery store after a different run to pick up some lunch.  Obviously we stopped by the ice cream section, and found something amazing! Thelma's, a wonderful Iowa-based cookie and ice cream sandwich company has expanded distribution to Minnesota!  Now Lizzy is not the only one with access to these wonderful ice cream sandwiches. Also, hopefully they will keep expanding around the country! Lizzy and I decided to get the Cayenne Chocolate Chip with Vanilla Ice Cream, a flavor NEW to the Thelma's line up, to split on Sunday before Lizzy left for Iowa. Madeline's take: Thelma's really nails both the cookie and ice cream texture necessary for a successful ice cream sandwich.  The cayenne chocolate chip cookies were hard enough not to completely soak up the melting ice cream and turn into mush but also soft enough that they didn't crumble or crack and make a mess. The amount of the cayenne in ...

My friend, Charlie, is moving out of Iowa City! So sad, but we obviously had to go to Heyn's one last time before he left. Back in the fall, I saw an Apple Pie flavor at Heyn's but for some reason didn't get it. Then, I was worried it was a seasonal flavor, and I wouldn't have a chance to try it again. Luckily, this is not the case, and you can get Heyn's Apple Pie year round. So I decided to get the Apple Pie and Snickers Swirl! Snickers Swirl So I think the Snickers Swirl flavor was vanilla ice cream, with caramel and pieces of Snickers. There was lots of caramel, and I think that was my favorite part of this flavor. There were a decent amount of Snickers pieces of varying sizes. Some were quite small, but others were sizable enough so that you could really taste each element of the Snickers bar. This flavor was good, but maybe add some peanuts and it would be out of this world! 🍦🍦🍦/4 cones! Look at all the caramel! The Apple Pie was also awesom...

Guys, we really like EXTRAVAGANZAS! This past weekend, your two friends over here at the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog had our most exciting adventure yet as bloggers! We've had ice cream extravaganzas before, eaten ice cream from all over the country, but nothing compares to our adventure this past weekend.  We went on an ice cream run! Yes, you read that right, we ran from ice cream shop to ice cream shop, nausea be damned! Our ice cream run was totally the brain child of Madeline and it involved four ice cream shops and three segments of running. We started at Sebastian Joe's, ran .95 miles to Milkjam, ran 3.86 miles to Pumphouse Creamery, and then ran .87 miles to Grand Ole Creamery! Thanks Alex, Rebecca, Laurel, Somyi, Theo and Humberto for coming on this crazy adventure! Lizzy: The only one of these I had been to before was Sebastian Joe's, so I was super pumped to try all of these shops. But I will definitely need to go back to them, because I didn't get as m...

The new Haagen-Dazs Destination Series has been hit a little and miss for me, with most flavors having at least one good element.  The Belgian Chocolate is definitely a hit, and in fact I think Haagen-Dazs hit it out of the park.  There's nothing better than a well-executed classic.  This flavor is described as Our Belgian chocolate combines rich, velvety chocolate ice cream with finely shaved Belgian chocolate for a uniquely textured experience. I think this flavor uses Haagen-Dazs' normal chocolate base, but I haven't had a flavor with that base in such a long time that I'm not 100% sure.  Either way, the base is awesome.  I was trying to think of why it tastes different than other chocolate bases, and I think it's because it reminds me of hot chocolate .... just frozen. You know how really good hot chocolate is perfectly milky and rich and smooth? Yeah, that's how this chocolate ice cream is. I'm also very impressed with the chocolate chip...

No, you did not go back in time! This past week I visited my former students and coworkers in Eldon. It was a ton of fun to see all my friends from last year and it was especially fun to stop by Cree Mee Drive In again! I always love a good malt, and I was in the mood for strawberry, so a strawberry malt it was! Look at the strawberry bits! This will be a quick little review, but of a great little treat! It was quite sweet and the malt flavor was light. And although it was definitely on the sweet side, the strawberry flavor was quite strong. There were definitely a lot of real strawberries, not just strawberry flavoring. Other than the strawberry bits, this malt was only medium thickness. The strawberry bits took this malt to the next level. They were a bit hard to suck through the straw, but that only added to the fun! Overall, I'll give this malt 🍦🍦🍦/4 cones because the real bits of strawberry were a wonderfully pleasant surprise!

Now that primary season is just about over, I've finally made my way over to the Hamburg Inn. For those of you that don't live in Iowa or don't follow the presidential primaries super closely, Hamburg Inn is an old diner in Iowa City mostly famous for being a frequent stop for presidential candidate visits. Often presidential candidates will order a famous pie shake from Hamburg. I went this past Monday to try this concoction! The pie shakes are made by blending an entire slice of pie (or cake, they have some cake flavors, like red velvet, which I want to try) with milk and soft serve ice cream. There are a lot of different flavors of pie to chose from and I was struggling to make my decision. I was intrigued by the bumbleberry, seeing as I had no idea what it actually was. The friend I was out with said she really liked it, so I went for it. After I ordered it, I asked our waitress what it bumbleberry actually was and she told me it is raspberry, rhubarb, and apple!!! Wh...

Sometimes, you just need to impulse purchase some middle-of-the-day ice cream even though you're really excited about all 5 pints of ice cream in your freezer.  Today was that day, and I tried the last of the new Royal Blizzards, the Royal Rocky Road Brownie Blizzard.  This is Brownies, peanuts, and Cocoa Fudge blended with creamy vanilla soft serve then filled with a perfectly paired marshmallow center. After eating this, I realized I haven't had Rocky Road ice cream in the LONGEST time. My first observation about this Blizzard is really an observation about DQ: I wish DQ carried chocolate soft serve in addition to vanilla soft serve instead of mixing chocolate into a vanilla base, as was the case here.  It ends up tasting like a weird chocolate/vanilla bastardization. There were tons of peanut pieces, 2-3 per bite.  They blended into the base a little bit, and I think salted peanuts would have helped with that. The brownies added some much-needed cho...

Wow I have been slacking on the ice cream reviews. Partly because I spent this past weekend in Colorado for a wedding eating lots of pastries and cake and such and not ice cream. But mostly because finals just ate my soul and I didn't have time to review any ice cream. Luckily, when I was almost done with finals I had some time to go to Capanna gelato with my friend, Tarah, who is also really into desserts. She hadn't been there yet and it seemed like the perfect way to celebrate (almost) the end of the semester. This time I decided to get the Coconut flavor and a Cake Batter type flavor. It had some sort of interesting name, like Cake Mania Royale, or something, but I don't exactly remember, and I failed and didn't take a picture. Regardless, both flavors were good. The coconut was quite sweet and more cream tasting than other coconut frozen desserts I've had. There also seemed to be a hint of vanilla flavor in the coconut gelato. Lost of coconut flakes wer...

There's nothing I love more than a great peach ice cream, and Sam's Choice has really delivered with their new Peach Cobbler.  This flavor is Peach ice cream with pie crust and peach bits and cream cheese swirl. The peach base of this flavor ranks up there with Graeter's (seasonal) Peach as the best peach ice cream I've ever had.  The front of the flavor profile is a strong peach, just like biting in to a fresh, juicy, ripe fruit.  Then the flavor transitions and finishes with a deep and rich cream. There weren't very many pie crust bits; I think I had about 6 in my pint.  The few I did get were 1/2'' squares barely on the too-dry side of perfectly flaky.  They had a buttery, rather than an oily, flavor. Holy cow, the peach bits were amazing, maybe even better than the Graeter's peach bits.  I don't know what kind of chemical magic Sam's Choice worked (probably corn starch and preservatives), but these did not taste frozen at al...