The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

So obviously Lizzy and I are obsessed with ice cream.  I mean, we started a blog to review ice creams, after all! The obsession, however, goes beyond that: I occasionally MAKE MY OWN ICE CREAM!  I've made a few flavors in the past, but this is the first time I'm reviewing one on the blog. This weekend I made Earl Grey Custard with apricot jam and cinnamon scone pieces. My friend Alex's family makes jams every year.  Last year we mixed some of the peach jam into graham cracker ice cream.  This year he had apricot jam and gave me his ONLY jar of it so I could use it in ice cream.  I immediately thought of doing a 'tea time' themed ice cream using the jam, but decided to go with Earl Grey instead of the more common green tea ice cream.  After these two elements, I thought, "Why not just go bonkers and add some scone pieces? Why not go absolutely bonkers and add some cinnamon scone pieces?" So I did. SCONES. I used the recipe for Earl Grey Tea ice c

Last winter I tried one of the then new-ish So Delicious Cashew Milk ice creams. After I published the review, a lactose intolerant friend of mine very excitedly told me I should try the Snickerdoodle flavor. Some how, getting around to this reader request kept getting pushed to the bottom of my ice cream to-do list. It's also been too long since I've reviewed a vegan ice cream, so woohoo here we go~~ In my opinion, vegan ice cream raises some important ontological questions. Because obviously ice cream should be at the center of any good ontological question as Reddit proved to us a few years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/287bw4/everything_is_or_isnt_ice_cream/ If everything is or isn't ice cream, what is vegan ice cream? I'll just let that one sit for a bit and get back to the more important stuff, reviewing ice cream. This flavor is described as A cinnamon delight loaded with chunks of gluten-free snickerdoodle cookie doug

This review is a little unique as it's actually two reviews in one ... but of the same product. Review 1: Oh my god this was the most frustrating ice cream experience I've ever had, but this is most likely due to what I'll call 'user error.' Last week I stopped at Whole Foods after a dance class and picked up a pint of Luna and Larry's Coconut Bliss Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge.  I took the bus home, so this pint was out of the freezer for ~35 minutes.  I stuck it in the freezer as soon as I got home.  The next day I grabbed the pint to scoop myself a bowl.  If you're a frequent non-dairy ice cream consumer, you know that you frequently have to let non-dairy ice creams temper before they're soft enough to scoop.  This is just due to the nature of the ingredients.  So, I let the pint temper for 5 minutes and tried to scoop it.  Solid as a rock.  So I let it sit for 5 more minutes.  Solid as a rock.  Ten more minutes; same thing. I finally got sick of

I occasionally go to Whole Foods to get a slightly different ice cream selection than the norm.  On a trip this weekend I picked up a pint of Graeter's Buckeye Chocolate Chip described as We pay tribute to our home state's famous Ohio buckeye candy with this flavor's blend of peanut butter, cocoa, peanut butter cookie dough, and our gourmet bittersweet chocolate chips.  Indulge and enjoy! After reading the description I was very excited about this flavor, but after trying it I found it a bit lacking.  In this review, I'll try to give you a good idea of why  I was excited and why I was disappointed. First, the base. This was my first time trying Graeter's chocolate base, and I was excited to see how they executed it.  I would say it was solid, somewhere between average and good.  It was a very milky chocolate, but did not taste cheap. The base itself was ok, but the way it interacted with the mix-ins was a bit of a disappointment.  It was very, very h

This post is going to contain two things besides a review of a gelato. First, a minor complaint about who I am as a person. Second, a major complaint with Talenti. It goes like this, I do not spend enough time scouring Talenti pints. If I decide to buy Talenti, I go to the ice cream isle, pursue the available Talenti flavors, pick which flavor I want to purchase, grab the pint of that flavor which is nearest to me, and go on my way. This is not a good idea because Talenti pints can be really hit or miss, if it is a flavor with a swirl, some pints are going to have tons of the swirl and others are going to have very little. Since the packaging is clear, you have an opportunity to pick out a pint that is going to be full of the chunks and swirls you want. But, and this is my minor complaint about who I am as a person, I am forgetful, and I never remember to do this when I am buying Talenti. However, my forgetfulness should not be an issue here. And this is my major complaint about

Lizzy mentioned in her previous post that when she finishes one ice cream 'challenge' (she recently tried all the flavors from New Orleans Ice Cream Company) she feels more ice cream-related existential angst than usual, and oh my god, I feel that SO hard.  Late summer is a bit of an ice cream dead zone - I've tried all of the new-for-2016 flavors as well as all of the summer flavors, but at the time of purchasing this pint, fall flavors hadn't hit the shelves yet.  On a recent trip to Target, my every movement imbued with existential angst, I grabbed a pint of Talenti Southern Butter Pecan. I think of Butter Pecan as one of the 'classic' ice cream flavors, and Talenti's version is always available at both my local Target and local grocery store, so I'm pretty surprised and disappointed that it took me this long to try it.  Talenti's brilliant flavor description author has this to say: Thank you, South, for deciding to roast your pecans in butte

Graeter's say the following about their Bourbon Pecan Chocolate Chip: We crafted this flavor with the bold taste of Kentucky bourbon, then loaded it with roasted, buttered, salted pecan halves and our gourmet bittersweet chocolate chips.  For adult tastes, but still kid safe.  Indulge and enjoy! It's been way too long since I've had some of those Graeter's chocolate chips!!!!!!!! Ugh, if you haven't had Graeter's chocolate chips before, do yourself a favor and get some of their ice cream immediately.  Graeter's uses a  French Pot Process  to churn their ice cream and make their chips by pouring gourmet chocolate into the pot as the ice cream churns and it freezes into the perfect, gigantic, not-quite-solid, chewy chocolate chunks.  Heaven.  There were a lot of chocolate chips, but I didn't get any of the signature Graeter's chips until the second half of the pint. There was plenty of chocolate in the top half, but it was diffused throughout

This review will be my fifth review of a banana ice cream in the last year and I'm not entirely sure why. As you may know, every single time I purchase and review a banana ice cream I simply end up saying, "I don't really like banana ice creams, but if you do, you'll probably like this." Which I am sure isn't entirely thrilling for you to read. But as I'm currently in between ice cream projects (I'm thinking of going for the whole line of Til the Cows Come Home, next) I get kind of listless and weird and more existential-crisis-y than normal in the ice cream isle and just buy pints I would never normally buy. Who knows, maybe this will be the banana ice cream to finally convince me I like banana ice cream? This flavor is described as We started with rich banana gelato and added a ribbon of golden Argentine caramel and bittersweet chocolatey bits to balance it out. Consider it the best banana flambé that's never actually been on fire . 

Sometimes you purchase an ice cream exclusively for the name.  Well, maybe you don't, but I certainly do.  Case in point, I bought  Cedar Crest Pirate's Bounty  because I thought the name was Pirate's Booty and Cedar Crest was making a pun about butts. Tina Belcher is my spirit animal. The same thing happened with Sanders Fine Chocolatiers Bumpy Cake.  No reference to butts this time, but the fact that a type of cake is called 'Bumpy Cake' really tickled my funny bone and I knew I would be taking home a container. I have never heard of Bumpy Cake so I did some sleuthing.  Per Wikipedia, Bumpy Cake is chocolate cake with thick ridges of buttercream frosting covered in chocolate ganache invented by Fred Sanders (founder of Sanders Confectionery) in 1913.  If Fred Sanders wasn't dead, I think he and I would get along very well.  THICK RIDGES OF BUTTERCREAM FROSTING. Sauce: http://www.sanderscandy.com/Chocolate-Fudge-Bumpy-Cake-p/50121.htm The ice cre

Excitement! Excitement! For those of you who are #blessed enough to live with HyVee's in your area, you probably noticed a while back that a bunch of new ice cream popped up on their shelves! This is because HyVee has started producing their own ice cream brands. In fact I think there are three new HyVee brands. Til the Cows Come Home is the priciest brand, which comes in pints, It's Your Churn is premium ice cream which comes in 1.5 quart containers, and We All Scream comes in 4 quart pails. And seeing as Madeline does not live near a HyVee it is my job to let you all know how these new(-ish) flavors are! The first flavor I decided to try was A Kick in the Peanut Butter. All of the Til the Cows Come Home flavors have puns in their names. This flavor is described as Chocolate ice cream with peanut butter ribbon, brownies and peanut butter candy cups . The chocolate base of this flavor was incredibly milky and sweet. My first bite was only swirl, and I was initially worr

In celebration of the recent  ice cream run  which started at Sonny's Cafe, I picked up a pint of Sonny's Gingerroot Sorbet.  Ginger is one of my favorite flavors of all times, but I don't often see it translated into ice cream or sorbet.  If it is, it is often mixed in with another flavor rather than the star of the show.  Needless to say, I was very excited by this flavor but also a bit worried that it wouldn't live up to my expectations.  I needn't have worried because after only a single bite I decided this was one of my favorite sorbets of all time.  I mean SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, this flavor is unbelievable. Everything about this concoction was total perfection.  The texture was not at all icy, but also wasn't creamy; which would have been inappropriate for a ginger flavor.  It felt hydrating and refreshing, and enhanced the flavor rather than distracting from it.  There was also a really nice bubbly sensation that made even the melted sorbet enjoyable

Sanders is a new to me brand that makes chocolates and candies as well as ice cream.  They have several shops in Michigan, but seem to do mostly wholesale and online commerce. Loaded Peanut Butter Cookie is Vanilla ice cream loaded with Peanut Butter Caramel, Chocolate Chunks, and Cookie Dough. Let's start with the not so great and work our way up to the pretty good.  The vanilla base was pretty bland. I just don't understand this. If you want a plain base to let other flavors shine through, then make a decent sweet cream, but if you're going to make a vanilla base, then make a decent vanilla base.  This ice cream was also fairly airy. The mix-ins were much better than the base.  The peanut butter caramel infused the base with a strong peanut butter flavor. The swirl itself was thick with a slight graininess from the peanut butter.  I really, really like the peanut butter and caramel combo; it's a way to add sweetness to peanut butter and saltiness to c

Runner's World recently ranked  Minneapolis as the 7th best running city in the nation, and I would venture to guess that it would rank pretty highly on a list of best ice cream cities as well.  What's better than combining these two things and some great friends on a beautiful late-summer day? Nothing, that's what! Beautiful day, wonderful humans! Lizzy and I organized an ice cream run  in late May where we ran about 5 miles and visited 4 ice cream shops in Uptown and south Minneapolis and it was a huge success! The general consesus was that we should do another one before the summer was over. (Sadly, Lizzy couldn't make it up from Iowa City for the weekend as her classes have already started - lame.)  This time we ran 4 miles and visited 3 ice cream shops -  Sonny's Ice Cream , Ben and Jerry's, and Tin Fish - on or near Lake Calhoun - one of the best running spots in one of the best running cities in the country! And we had, if I do say so myself, one