The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Kyle and I have gone to Royal Orchid Thai several times. It's just north of Northeast Minneapolis, so maybe a bit out of the way, but definitely worth the trip. On our first trip, I somehow missed the inclusion of HOMEMADE ICE CREAM on the dessert menu. That's right, homemade ice cream. On our second trip, I got a scoop of mango and a scoop of coconut, the two flavors available that day. I'm going to say right off the bat that you KNOW homemade ice cream is going to be fantastic and rated 🍦🍦🍦🍦/4 no matter what. Now that that's out of the way, it's on to the review! Each scoop was on the small side of medium, and I think I paid about $4, which seems pretty fair for dessert at a restaurant. The mango ice cream was really interesting. It definitely had a pure, sweet mango flavor, but it was softer or less intense than other mango ice creams I've had, letting the fresh milk and cream of the base stand out. It might seem like a less strong flavor would make ...

With their new for 2017 flavors, Ben & Jerry's are really calling on some of their old flavors. Oat of this Swirled reminded us of Oatmeal Cookie Chunk and the name of this flavor kind of reminds me of Clusterfluff. Granted, before they brought the flavor to the graveyard they changed the name to What A Cluster, Clusterfluff was one of my most favorite ice creams of all time. And yes, I am only bringing this up as an opportunity to beg for the return of Clusterfluff on the off change anyone from Ben & Jerry's is reading this. But to focus on the matter at hand, Truffle Kerfuffle is a fabulous name of an ice cream and is described as Vanilla Ice Cream with Roasted Pecans, Fudge Chips & a Salted Chocolate Ganache Swirl . To start, I'm going to jump right in with what is arguably the most interesting aspect of this pint, the salted chocolate ganache swirl. Given that this ice cream is called Truffle Kerfuffle, I was expecting this swirl to be like the i...

I think Sweet Me is a new brand to this blog, but I've actually tried some before. I had a pint, and then completely forgot to write about it, and by the time I remembered I couldn't recall what I wanted to say about the flavor. In any case, Sweet Me has finally made it to Big Muddy with their Dark Chocolate Mint, creamy dark chocolate mint ice cream swirled with pieces of chocolatey shavings. I really, really love mint (Moroccan mint tea is actually the best thing in the world), which makes me pretty particular about mint ice cream. The mint flavoring can't be mint extract, that's gross, and the real mint can't be over-steeped or over-cooked because that is perhaps more disgusting. I didn't actually look at the ingredients, and they're not listed on the website, but Dark Chocolate Mint certainly didn't taste like it was flavored with mint extract. The chocolate ice cream was a deep, rich, dark chocolate. Although Sweet Me is premium ice crea...

Look at me go! I am moving through these Trio flavors. I've already tried the two flavors of this line that sounded the best to me, the triple chocolate and the coffee. I've picked up all of these flavors at the North Dodge HyVee. I'm not sure why, but this caramel flavor didn't sound like it would be all that delicious to me. I think the orange-ish-gold color on the label of this flavor looks really strange to me and that's what made me kind of turned off to the idea of this flavor. But this is all very silly, so here we go. Does anyone else think this packaging looks weird? This flavor is described as Layers of crispy Belgian chocolate, salted caramel & chocolate ice cream . When I first opened the pint I was greeted by a vibrant color that matched the color on the label. I was torn by being super enticed by the almost bright color of the caramel ice cream and slightly put off. But when I dug in, the caramel flavor was not nearly as dark, complex...

I haven't really been keeping track of or hunting down the new Blue Bunny flavors, so I was pleasantly surprised to find Toffee Brownie Twist, toffee ice cream, caramel fudge swirl, brownie chunks, toffee pieces, at my local Wal-Mart. I was pretty excited to see Blue Bunny attempt a toffee base as well as toffee mix-ins, and also the toffee/brownie combo which is not often done. The base initially tastes very buttery with a hint of that unique toffee taste. Side note, it is super  hard to describe how things taste. Toffee just tastes like toffee, duh! As I ate more of the ice cream, the toffee flavor of the base faded and was overwhelmed by the brownie and toffee mix-ins. The brownies were large, dense, and moist. They could have been a touch fudgier, but no big complaints. The toffee pieces were also large and added a delightful crunch. I feel like toffee is either great or disgusting. All good toffee tastes pretty much the same, and all bad toffee tastes equally nasty....

Remember the movie Gigli? That train wreck of a movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez with a whopping 6% Rotten Tomatoes rating? Yeah, you remember it. In my university's freshman writing class, each person chose a 'cultural text' and spent the semester analyzing their cultural text. Inexplicably, one of my very good friends chose Gigli as his cultural text. Why? I don't know, maybe for the sake of irony, maybe it was pure masochism. Whatever the reasons, we watched that stupid, awful, terrible movie at least 7  times that semester. It was so bad every time, but it was also SO FUN. Hostess Ding Dong ice cream sandwiches may just be the frozen dessert equivalent of the best good-bad movie. They're objectively terrible, but I also want to eat them all.  Officially these are vanilla frozen dairy dessert sandwiches with chocolatey coating.  Frozen dairy dessert, not ice cream and chocolatey coating, not chocolate coating. These were awful. The ice cr...