The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

It one kind of fun to write reviews of products you really enjoy and an entirely different kind of fun to pan terrible products, but it is exactly zero kinds of fun to write a review of a product you didn't particularly like made by a brand you adore. I'M SORRY BB. Thelma's Treats has a new ice cream sandwich with one chocolate chip cookie, one double chocolate chip cookie and some strange marshmallow/graham ice cream. Thelma's was originally a cookie company, and their ice cream sandwiches use their cookies and Anderson Erickson ice cream. I thought the double dark chocolate cookie would outshine the regular chocolate chip cookie, but the combo actually worked quite well. The double chocolate cookie give this treat a ridiculous richness which was balanced by the lighter buttery/caramelized flavor of the the regular chocolate chip cookie. I cannot fault Thelma's at all for cookie execution. Unfortunately, the ice cream failed to live up to the cookies. Li...

Nana Banana, banana ice cream with salted caramel almond butter swirl, is the second of two flavors I picked up from the new Target x Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) collab. You can get my general thought on the MOIC in my  review of Piñata , but to sum up, it irks me that the MOIC is not, in fact, a museum and yet calls themselves a museum. I was unimpressed with the quality of Piñata, and it's way too easy to make a bad banana ice cream, so my expectations for Nana Banana were quite low.  The quality of the base was not great. It had a noticeably low fat content and as a result was hard and icy and melted down into a runny liquid. Despite that, the banana flavor of the base was not bad. It could have been a bit stronger, but it tasted like real banana and not banana flavoring. The salted caramel almond butter swirl had huge potential. It had a strong taste of almond butter - the the more complex and almost floral taste of lightly roasted almonds. The salted caramel added...

The blog is not dead! Just my computer. My poor, old computer, that I bought in 2012, was felled by a drop of water several weeks ago, and I have finally acquired a new one. In Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog style, I will begin my first post back with a complaint. I do not like the Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC). It's not a museum. It's a building full of Instagram backdrops aka an 'experience-first brand' as they themselves claim. I'm not against the content of the MOIC, but for fuck's sake don't call yourself a museum. Museums are for learning and wonder and awe. They have a dot org website extension. I'm skeptical of the quality of a product produced by an 'experience-first' company, but I grabbed two flavors of the new Museum of Ice Cream pints available at Target. Not gonna lie, the containers are super cute, and that was 90% of the reason I bought them. Piñata is Vanilla ice cream with iced animal cookies, frosted cupcake bits, fizzy cotton...

Hi, my name is Madeline and I'm a mint snob. I just really love mint, and you can piss right off if you make a crummy mint product. Mint tea? It better be stuffed with fresh mint leaves not some speckles of dried mint leaf in a tea bag. Mojito? There better be mint all up in there, not just one lonely sprig as a garnish. Mint ice cream? It BETTER not be flavored with mint extract. I BETTER see pieces of real mint leaves. Coolhaus Dirty Mint Chip is my holy grail of mint ice cream. I first tried this ice cream as part of the  Mintimalism  ice cream sandwich and knew I had to get my hands on a pint of the stuff. Thanks to Fresh Thyme Farmer's Market I found a pint!!!!! This flavor is fresh mint leaf ice cream, brown sugar, dark chocolate chips. This is the best mint ice cream ever.  The sweet cream base is light, delicate, and milky which lets the mint shine through. And, oh my goodness, THE MINT. Coolhaus certainly did not skimp on mint leaves. You can see the bits...

I'm not dead! I've been pretty uninspired to blog the past few weeks, and additionally I've been making my way through a gigantic container of homemade blackberry ginger trifle ice cream so I didn't have the fear of getting behind in reviews to motivate me. BUT, I'm back now with a review of Coolhaus Chocolate Molten Cake, dark chocolate ice cream with chewy cake pieces and fudge frosting swirl. Even if you don't consciously realize it,  if you are a native English speaker, you probably put your adjectives in a certain order, and I just cannot wrap my poor brain around the choice to say 'chocolate molten cake' instead of 'molten chocolate cake.' I get that Coolhaus is trying to describe a molten cake that happens to be chocolate, but it just sounds so wrong!!! Basically the anti-Halo Top Despite the odd name, Chocolate Molten Cake thankfully doesn't suffer from Coolhaus' usual problem of too-small mix-ins.  The dark chocolat...

Prepare your body and soul for SO MANY MOAR Coolhaus reviews! Today I have Milkshake & Fries, salted Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with shoestring french fries and milk chocolate malt balls. Confession. I have never been a fan of dipping french fries in milkshake. I don't dislike  it, I just don't get it. Intellectually, I get why people like the hot/cold sweet/salty combination, but to me it just tastes like a fry .... and some milkshake. The total is not more than the sum of its parts. Despite, this I think french fries in ice cream could work really well. I recently reviewed Coolhaus' salted Tahitian vanilla bean base in my review of  Campfire S'mores . It's nearly perfect. It's a strong but not overpowering vanilla flavor and the salt helps to emphasize the sweetness of the base. In that review, I also brought up Coolhaus' propensity towards smaller mix-ins meant to blend with the base, as opposed to Ben and Jerry's-style chunktastic...

FUN. That's my one word review of Coolhaus Birthday Cake Ice Cream Sammie, rainbow sprinkle cake cookie and cupcake frosting ice cream. Coolhaus started as an ice cream sandwich company and later expanded to produce pints. Their pint flavors are hit or miss for me, but I've never had an ice cream sandwich I didn't thoroughly enjoy. The Birthday Cake Sammie may not be for everyone - it's very sweet - but I loved it. The cookies are a basic sugar cookie, but with a perfect texture and plenty of sprinkles baked in. The cookies are thick, soft, and chewy, but don't get soggy. This means you don't have a mess on your hands (literally!) if the ice cream starts to melt. The sprinkles really took this to the next level. These were no weak-ass sprinkles! These were huge, sugary sprinkles, and the cookies were chock full of 'em! Honestly, I would eat these cookies alone. If you didn't get your sugar fix from the cookies, the cupcake frosting ice...

S'mores is the flavor of summer! At the beginning of May I raced (and won! - it was a very small race) a 10K in White Bear Lake, a northern suburb/exurb of Minneapolis. As I was on my way home, I spotted Fresh Thyme Farmer's Market. A new location just opened up very close to the University of Minnesota, and I'd been meaning to go, especially after I heard from David at  David's Ice Cream Reviews  that they carry Coolhaus! He was not kidding! They had so many flavors! I limited myself to a few pints and a few ice cream sandwiches, but made sure to pick up the summery-sounding Campfire S'mores - S alted Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream, graham cracker cookie butter marshmallow swirl, dark chocolate squares. Since I haven't reviewed much Coolhaus in the past, I want to get something out right up front: I didn't like this flavor that much, but that doesn't reflect my opinions on Coolhaus as a brand. Their ice cream sandwiches are great and they have...

Haagen-Dazs Dark Chocolate Coconut Cookies and Cream is the last of the new dairy-free TRIO flavors I tried as well as the last new TRIO flavor of 2018. It has a chocolate and coconut base with dark chocolate layers and chocolate cookie pieces. The coconut flavor is definitely prominent at first. It's a warmer, tropical coconut flavor bordering on, but not crossing over into sunscreen territory. Eventually you start to taste the chocolate base, and once it hits, it dials down the intensity of the coconut. After a few bites, the two feel pretty well balanced with the coconut perhaps a bit stronger. Interestingly, the chocolate base was visually dominant. With other TRIO flavors, I felt the large quantity of the crunchy layer overwhelmed the other elements, but here, having so much dark chocolate crunch helped achieve a good chocolate-coconut balance. I didn't feel there were enough chocolate cookies. I always enjoy the buttery, floury taste and texture of a good cookie...

Are you experiencing deja vu? That's because Haagen-Dazs Midnight Cookies and Cream is a limited edition flavor that comes back over and over and over again. Really, at this point, Haagen-Dazs just needs to make this part of their permanent line-up. I  went back and checked  the last time  I reviewed this flavor, and Haagen-Dazs has changed the description, but I don't believe they changed the actual flavor. This time they say Dedicated to the serious chocolate lover, our Midnight Cookies and Cream combines chocolate fudge swirls, decadent dark chocolate cookie pieces, and creamy dark chocolate ice cream. Three chocolate elements means Midnight Cookies and Cream meets my criteria for an ice cream to eat while your are sobbing over a tragic life event. Eating the entire pint in one go is required. Haagen-Dazs has a pretty decent chocolate base, and the dark chocolate base takes that to the next level. It's darker than a typical milk chocolate base, but not so ...

Life is basically just screaming into the void, so I'm going to go ahead and scream this review of Talenti Almond Butter & Honey Special Batch gelato into the void of it's old news and this point and maybe not even available anymore. Talenti says: We blend almond butter with fresh milk and cream to create a creamy almond butter gelato before topping it off with a dash of salt and a swirl of wildflower honey. It's very hard to categorize what makes a Talenti success. They're generally terrible at mix-ins, but their chocolate flakes are divine. This makes you think their mix-in free flavors would generally be better than the non-mix in flavors, but they have some terrible mix-in free flavors. Their nut flavors are generally pretty good, but some, like Pistachio, are just meh. Whatever the recipe for Talenti success, Almond Butter & Honey achieves it. The almond butter base had a light, delicate sweetness with almost a floral hint to it. This was compleme...

Hooray for the Upper Midwest! Sanders Fine Chocolatiers is a Michigan-based company. Their ice cream is available in scoop shops - located mostly near Detroit with one shop on Mackinac Island - and several retail locations. On a recent trip to Tim and Tom's Speedy Market I picked up a container of Lemon Twis-Tea, refreshing lemon and green tea flavored ice cream with candy lemon bits. I laughed a little when I saw the word 'refreshing' in the description. I don't usually think of ice cream as refreshing. It always makes me too thirsty. If I want something refreshing I go for a fruity sorbet. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised. This ice cream was surprisingly refreshing. I would go so far as to call it the perfect summer ice cream. I love the vintage-y packaging design! The base was lightly flavored, but this actually worked to the ice cream's advantage. Many lemon ice creams either go for a sweet or strong lemon flavor to mimic a lemon bar, but San...

Vice Cream has finally hit the Upper Midwest! You've probably seen it on all of those ~coastal~ ice cream blogs and instagram accounts, but I don't care, I'm still going to make you read about it again! When I first saw this at my local Cub there were two flavors available and I decided to pick up Breakfast in Bed, maple ice cream, sticky bun dough, pecan praline, maple syrup and cinnamon cream cheese ripple . Does it sound like there was a lot going on? There was a lot going on. I loved the base. The combination of the dairy and maple syrup reminded me of Waffle Crips cereal. The maple flavor was very sweet, but there was another underlying flavor adding some fullness and richness to tone down the sweet maple. After reading the ingredients, I believe this additional flavor to be vanilla. The ingredients list vanilla ice cream, and then further down list maple flavoring. I've never thought to combine vanilla and maple before, but I'm a fan. The sticky bun...

Sooooooooo, even thought Talenti is primarily a gelato company, I think that, on average, their sorbetto is head and shoulders above their gelato. They have some pretty great gelatos, but I've thoroughly enjoyed  every  sorbetto I've tried. Talenti has this to say about their new Cold Brew Sorbetto: Fair-trade Brazilian and Colombian cold-brew coffee is blended with everything but the milk to create our Cold Brew Coffee Sorbetto.  This sorbetto was so creamy, I was SHOCKED that it was dairy-free, so I immediately checked out the ingredients. Cold Brew Coffee Sorbetto includes egg yolks, whole eggs, coconut oil, and almonds. I think the eggs probably give it a slightly stiffer, creamier texture than you normally expect from a sorbet and the coconut oil and almonds add some richness you normally get from milk and cream. True to cold-brewed coffee, the coffee flavor was intense and pure without any acidity, and there was no dairy flavor to cloud or cover cof...

Reason number five hundred and eleventy trillion why I hate grad school: the end of the semester was predictably hectic, but now the semester is over and I'm BUSIER. THAN. EVER. I have a summer internship starting June 4, and my advisor and I are trying to finish a paper before then, so I've been swamped with work. I definitely blame it on grad school sucking and not on lack-luster time management skills. I finished my pint of Ben and Jerry's Gimme S'more! over a month ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing a review due to the aforementioned busyness that is in no way, shape, or form of my own making. Gimme S'more! has toasted marshmallow ice cream with chocolate cookie swirls, graham cracker swirls, and fudge flakes. Did I enjoy this ice cream? Yes. Was it what it professed to be? No. Did it remind me of a S'more? No. The toasted marshmallow base did not read as toasted marshmallow to me. I didn't get the soft hints of vanilla you typ...

Fun things are fun and I'm a total sucker for fun things that are fun! I didn't actually buy a Unicorn Frappuccino when Starbucks introduced them last year because the baristas at the Starbucks close to me on campus always seem slightly overwhelmed, so I generally try to avoid adding to their mounting panic. However, as soon as Target released their new Unicorn Magic flavor which is CLEARLY inspired by the Starbucks Unicorn Frap I was on the lookout for it. I FINALLY found it. Unicorn Magic is Pink fruity ice cream with a sour blue raspberry swirl, frosting swirl, and glitter candy bits. I love how the description just calls the base 'pink fruity ice cream.' Seriously, which fruits though?! I think there was probably some cherry in there as well as some floral notes because taking a whiff of it reminded me of sampling the Bath and Bodyworks Cherry Blossom lotion at the mall as a tween. Do people still go to malls? It was THE cool thing to do when I was in middl...

The last (and best!) of the new, non-non-dairy Haagen-Dazs TRIOs! Vanilla Caramel White Chocolate is layers of vanilla and caramel ice cream with crunchy white chocolate and sweet caramel sauce. I would argue that decadent, non-chocolate flavors are Haagen-Dazs' forte. In particular, they do white chocolate and caramel very well. White Chocolate Raspberry and Caramel Cone are my two favorite core Haagen-Dazs flavors with Dulce de Leche a close third. Vanilla Caramel White Chocolate combines these, so it's bound to be good. The caramel and vanilla ice creams are both very lightly flavored so the blend together into a single flavor that's a bit warmer and more complex than a plain vanilla and lighter and sweeter than a plain caramel base. The white chocolate is strongly flavored. (Well, as strongly flavored as a white chocolate can be.) It adds a rich, buttery element to to the light base, but doesn't overwhelm the flavor of the base. The caramel swirl ...

Haagen-Dazs is currently at the top of the grocery-store-ice-cream-brand-starts-making-non-dairy-ice-cream game. That is a very specific game with basically only two participants: Ben and Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs. All kidding aside, Haagen-Dazs' non-dairy ice creams, which they introduced last year, are actually quite tasty, and not just tasty-for-non-dairy-tasty. Boy, I'm really into hyphens today. This year, Haagen-Dazs introduced two non-dairy TRIO flavors. About Crunchy Peanut Butter, Haagen-Dazs says Layers of smooth peanut butter brimming with chocolate-covered peanuts are stacked between rich, velvety chocolate and sheets of crispy dark chocolate for a delightfully textured non-dairy experience. The peanut butter 'ice cream' has a nice, round, full texture.  (Cornstarch will do that!) It has a pretty strong peanut butter flavor with a nice balance between salty and sweet. The peanut butter flavor was strong enough that I could taste it against the c...

I finally have a review of Chillin' the Roast, the last of the three new Truffles flavors from Ben and Jerry's. Chillin' the Roast is cold brew coffee ice cream with chocolate cookie-covered coffee liqueur truffles and fudge swirls. Before I get to the review I just have to ask WHAT is up with the name of this flavor? Is it supposed to be a pun on something? A pun on what? Ruling the roost? Chillin' for cold brew? I don't get it. Chillin' the Roast suffers from the same shortcomings as Chocolate Shake It and Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake. In all three flavors the base is great, the mix-ins are great, and the truffles are just weird. The cheesecake base of Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake is far beyond the base in Ben and Jerry's other cheesecake flavors. The chocolate malt base of Chocolate Shake It could have a stronger malt flavor, but is still tasty and unique within Ben and Jerry's line up. The cold brew coffee base of Chillin' the Roast is F...

Banana Peanut Butter Chip is the second flavor out of three I've tried from Haagen-Dazs' new Decadent Collection. I enjoy a good banana ice cream, but despise a bad banana ice cream. I loved  Honey Salted Caramel Almond  from the Decadent Collection, so I had high hopes that Haagen-Dazs would execute banana ice cream well. This flavor is a banana ice cream base with peanut butter swirls and dark chocolate chips. Somewhat surprisingly, the best banana ice cream base I've ever tried was in Great Value's (Wal-Mart Brand) Banana Puddin'. Haagen-Dazs nearly lived up to this base. Like Great Value, they use banana puree rather than artificial banana flavoring which avoids the sickly-sweet fake banana taste. I could have done with a slightly less sweet and slightly stronger banana flavor here, but the base was generally enjoyable. I was first introduced to Haagen-Dazs' peanut butter swirl in their Chocolate Peanut Butter flavor which I think is one of the be...