The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Seems like the Midwest (aka the BEST COAST) always gets limited edition flavors weeks after they show up on the East and West coasts. One Love, Ben and Jerry's limited edition flavor honoring Bob Marley FINALLY appeared in grocery store freezers in Minnesota in mid-June. This flavor is Banana ice cream with caramel and graham cracker swirls and fudge peace signs. Oh banana ice cream. I always think to myself, "I don't like banana ice cream," but every time I actually have some I like it.  I took one whiff of One Love and thought, "Oof, the banana flavor is WAY too strong here." My first bite confirmed my suspicions, but by the third bite I was enjoying the ice cream. I guess I should just give in and declare myself a banana ice cream lover. The banana base was very strong. Not quite 'banana runts' strong, but close. The cream came through and helped mellow the banana. Things improved even more when I got a bite of the caramel swirl. The...

Hello friends! I, too, promise that I am not dead. I haven't been eating a ton of ice cream or writing reviews because I am off doing my summer research. I've been very busy with that, and a lot of my research takes place in the evening when I'm normally eating ice cream. While I've been satisfying my dessert stomach with plenty of donuts, instead, that means you, Dearest Reader, haven't been getting very many reviews. But have no fear, you obviously have one coming to you right now! My research is in a city a bit bigger than Iowa City that luckily has a Trader Joe's!! So while the Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter Ice Cream has been out forever, I haven't lived in a city with a Trader Joe's for a while. As a lover of all things cookie butter, I've been wanting to try this flavor forever  and yay I finally got an opportunity! This flavor is a vanilla base, speculoos cookie pieces, and a cookie butter swirl. Okay to start, the base of t...

It's high time I got around to reviewing the rest of the new Haagen-Dazs TRIO flavors. I tried Vanilla Blackberry Chocolate when the TRIOs were first released, but hadn't tried any others when I saw that my grocery store was no longer going to carry them. *GASP* I scooped up the remaining three flavors: Coffee Vanilla Chocolate, Salted Caramel Chocolate, and Triple Chocolate. I'll review them from least favorite to most favorite. Up first, Salted Caramel Chocolate. I think Haagen-Dazs' insistence on making every flavor a trio of flavors really hurt them here. Of course, it couldn't be called a trio if it's not a trio, but they really could have left out the chocolate ice cream. Both the salted caramel and chocolate were such strong flavors that they blended together and made kind of a non-flavor. There was enough chocolate from the Belgian chocolate layers, and leaving out the chocolate ice cream would let the salted caramel shine. 🍦🍦/4 Coffee ...

I was completely and utterly surprised by how much I enjoyed the Edy's and Hostess Twinkie ice cream collaboration, described as sweet butter cream ice cream with sponge cake pieces and a frosting swirl. I was expecting to simultaneously like the ice cream and be disgusted by it, as I am with actual Twinkies, but it was actually quite good! The base tastes just like a Twinkie, but more concentrated. One thing that makes Twinkies kind of gross is that the cake is almost flavorless. I think it helps that the ice cream is not oily like the cakes. The butter in the base really stood out, and I honestly didn't realize until I tried the ice cream that Twinkies were going for a buttery flavor. The sponge cake pieces were also 'Twinkie but better.' Twinkies are not very dense, but Edy's went with less airy cake pieces. It had a nice spongy texture and the sweet flavor of yellow cake. I couldn't taste the frosting swirl as a separate element, but I could te...

Every time I try a new Sweet Me Creamery flavor I'm more impressed. Sweet Cream Espresso Mocha is Vanilla ice cream kissed with espresso and swirled with caramel and fudgy brownies. It's a bit funny that this flavor is called Sweet Cream  Espresso Mocha, and yet it has a vanilla base. I tend to think of a base as being either a pure sweet cream or flavored. No middle ground. Yet the base of Sweet Cream Espresso Mocha manages to straddle the line between a sweet cream and a vanilla base without creating something that's just a sad, weakly vanilla-flavored base. The base was buttery with a hint of vanilla flavor to warm things up even more.  The espresso flavor is part of the base rather than a separate element. It was incredibly dark and rich which served to bring out the sweetness of the base. The brownies were large and incredibly dense and chewy. Greyston Bakery brownies are the gold standard for ice cream mix-ins. These came very, very close in texture, and ...

Wowwowowowow. I have not posted in a long time. Weeks ago I was in Kansas City before Madeline and I embarked on our Katy Trail adventure. As a Missourian, I have wanted to go to Glacé artisan ice cream for a long time now, even though I still maintain that St. Louis is the superior Missouri city. Glacé was opened by Christopher Elbow who is also a renowned chocolatier. Glacé offered some unique flavors, as well as some classics. Curry Cashew on top and Salted Pretzel on bottom. After much deliberation, I picked Salted Pretzel and Curry Cashew. I have thought about how delicious a curry ice cream would be for a long time and I was pumped to try some. The Curry Cashew was awesome. It was spicy; not hot spicy, but flavorful spicy. The cream and the cashew added a fattiness and nuttiness to the flavor that rounded out the curry nicely. While the curry was flavorful and rich, it wasn't so strong that I couldn't taste the cream underneath or the cashew. And on that note, I...

I want to jump right in to the description of Edy's Cake and Cookie Fantasy Frozen Yogurt: Red velvet and sugar cookie frozen yogurt swirled together with decadent cookie dough pieces and chocolate cookie crumbles. I mean, just, what is going on here? This sounds like a snack drunk, college Madeline would have concocted. I was pretty skeptical of the red velvet and sugar cookie combo. Red Velvet is a dark, rich, chocolate decadence, and sugar cookies are sweet and light. Together they tasted like those ridiculous delicious/disgusting grocery store frosted sugar cookies with icing attempting to be red velvet-flavored. Obviously, this flavor was over-the-top sugary, but I think it would have worked with a rich ice cream base instead of a yogurt base. Despite the sweetness, the tartness of the yogurt came through but didn't really blend  with the sugar. I kept getting random blasts of tartness through the sugary background. The sugar cookie mix-ins tasted like ...