The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Last year I was really excited for Haagen-Dazs original TRIOS, but I thought all three flavors were kind of a let down. Mainly, they weren't well balanced so one element always ended up more prominent than the others.  Their new flavors, Coconut Caramel Chocolate, Lemon Raspberry White Chocolate, and Vanilla Caramel White Chocolate all sound delicious, and I bought all three hoping they were better than last year's. Coconut Caramel Chocolate is Belgian chocolate and caramel sauce, coconut and chocolate ice cream. If Coconut Caramel Chocolate is any indication, Haagen-Dazs has at least somewhat addressed the balance issues in this new iteration of TRIO flavors. Taking my first bite of this flavor, I was hit with a warm, tropical coconut flavor. As I ate more and more ice cream, the coconut flavor was supplanted by a soft, milky, smooth chocolate spiked with the darker, deeper chocolate of the crunchy layer. The caramel sauce didn't stand out as a distinc...

Leave it to my trusty Tim and Tom's Speedy Market to be the first place in town I found the new Ben and Jerry's truffle flavors! I picked up all three new truffle flavors (Chillin' the Roast, Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake, and Chocolate Shake It) and let Kyle choose which one to crack open first. He chose Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake, caramel cheesecake ice cream with graham cracker-covered cheesecake truffles & chocolate cookie swirls. Even though Ben and Jerry's has a history of sub-par cheesecake ice creams, I was HYPED for this flavor, because the chocolate cookie butter in Ben and Jerry's Boom Chocolatta! is perhaps my favorite ice cream mix-in of all time. ALL TIME! And I've eaten a lot of ice cream mix-ins. I was hoping that would get re-used here. I was pleasantly surprised by my first bite. I got a big shock of cheesecake flavor, so it seems Ben and Jerry's took some steps to remedy their frankly pitiful previous attempts at chees...

Along with a trio of new TRIO flavors, Haagen-Dazs introduced the Decadent Collection consisting of Honey Salted Caramel Almond, Banana Peanut Butter Chip, and Midnight Cookies and Cream. Haagen-Dazs says this about Honey Salted Caramel Almond: This decadent blend of honey ice cream, swirls of salted caramel, and crunchy toasted almonds was lovingly crafted to raise awareness for the honeybees and other pollinators who bring us so many of our favorite ingredients. This ice cream spea ks to the deepest levels of my soul. I tend to enjoy slightly weird or unique flavors, but I like them to be done well. Well-balanced, rich, flavorful. Also, some of my favorite flavors - not flavors of anything in particular - include ginger, honey, lemon, and cinnamon. All are criminally underused as ice cream base flavors, so I was ecstatic to see Haagen-Dazs tackling a honey base. The honey flavor is so rich. The strong, sweet dairy base is the perfect canvas for a honey flavor that...

Klondike Cookie Dough Swirl bars are indulgent cookie dough ice cream with beautiful cookie dough swirls, all dipped in thick milk chocolate y coating. I had really high hopes for these bars, thinking that the cookie dough ice cream would be on a level with the caramel ice cream in the Caramel Pretzel bars and the toffee ice cream in HEATH bars. The cookie dough ice cream starts off with a nice strong eggy, sweet flavor, but this quickly fades. Klondike ice cream isn't particularly dense, so there's not that rich dairy base for the flavor to grab on to. The caramel and toffee ice creams complement the hint of toffee in the shell, so the two elements enhance each other, overcoming the lighter flavor of the ice cream. The cookie dough ice cream has to hold it's own against the chocolate shell, and the flavor is just not quite strong enough. Klondike swirls are always a bit weird - they are very thin ribbons, so don't add much of a textural element. The c...

I was surprised when I saw a new Magnum flavor, Double Cherry Truffle, on freezer shelves as I didn't hear about it at all on social media, and their Double Hazelnut and Double Cookies & Cream were a lot more hyped last year. Double Cherry Truffle is Cherry ice cream with a dark chocolate ganache swirl dipped in a chocolatey coating, luscious cherry sauce, and milk chocolate. The first few bites of the Double Cherry Truffle were absolutely divine. A strong, tart and sweet cherry sauce offsets a warm, rich dark chocolate shell. Unfortunately, about half way through the bar, I ran into the typical problem I have with Magnum bars: the chocolate flavor inevitably overwhelms the ice cream and sauce. Magnum's whole schtick is that they use Belgian chocolate for a superior chocolate shell, and I agree. The shell is superior. I really like Magnum's shells, especially for what is essentially a mass-market brand. The remaining elements of the Magnum bars need to come...

I've been putting off writing a review of Klondike S'mores bars for a few days. These are creamy marshmallow ice cream with sweet graham cracker swirls inside a delightfully breakable milk chocolate flavored shell. The marshmallow ice cream has a very strong and distinctive flavor, and I keep flip-flopping about whether or not I liked the flavor and whether or not these bars are truly s'mores flavored. After a long period of contemplation, I think I didn't really enjoy the marshmallow ice cream and they are not truly s'mores flavored. Calling all my ladies who were tweens in the '00s - the marshmallow ice cream tasted like I imagine a Lip Smackers S'mores chapstick turned into ice cream would taste. A very fake, sweet, and bold marshmallow flavor. Also - I think it's high time we make Lip Smackers retro-cool. The graham cracker swirl toned down the intense base a bit, but I don't think it was a strong enough flavor to really qualify these...

Fuck Halo Top. Lol, wut? This isn't even a Halo Top review, but hear me out. There were 'health' ice creams, such as Arctic Zero, before Halo Top, but Halo Top added a high-protein gimmick and cute marketing and has steadily been capturing more of the ice cream market and I hate them. Mainly I hate their branding and message that completely centers around food guilt. Like, can we just not at this point? Eat real ice cream if you want to. Eat Halo Top if you want to. But let's all just respect and not police each other's food choices. Also, they have a shit product. I think I described their Birthday Cake flavor as like eating paper sprayed with birthday cake-scented perfume. Finally, I hate them because brands like Talenti and Ben and Jerry's now feel the need to step into the 'healthy' ice cream market. Urgh. In an ideal world, I would stay away from these new 'healthy' options, but I'm an ice cream blogger, so I'm taking one from the...

Has anyone else noticed less and less Talenti on their grocery store shelves? Just me? A lot of what was once Talenti real estate at my local Cub Foods and Target is now given over to Halo Top (grrrr), and I JUST NOW found Cinnamon Peach Biscuit which was new last year. Cinnamon Peach Biscuit is c innamon sugar gelato with biscuit cookies and a sweet swirl of peach butter. God damn Talenti and their weak-ass mix-ins!! I get that gelato typically as smaller, more well-distributed mix-ins, but Talenti's mix-ins, aside from their chocolate chips, are just so weird! The biscuit cookie mix-ins were small, about a quarter-inch in diameter or a bit smaller, and there weren't many of them, maybe one every other bite. If the cookies were decent, I could live with the poor distribution, but they were so dry and tasteless! It honestly would have been a better flavor with no mix-ins. As usual, the Talenti texture was stellar - dense and smooth. The cinnamon flavor of the base...

I'm so close to trying all of the Klondike bar flavors! I have S'Mores and Cookie Dough in my freezer, and I only have to hunt down Double Chocolate, Rocky Road, and Neapolitan to finish off all 14 varieties! Before doing research for this post, I was conflating Hershey's Krackel Bars and Nestle's Crunch Bars into one candy bar called a Krunch bar, but in fact Klondike's Krunch bar is their own version of crisped rice in milk chocolate. This is basically an Original Klondike Bar with an added bit of crunch. There's not too much else to say. As with Original, the vanilla ice cream leaves a bit to be desired, but the chocolate shell has the nice, complex toffee undertones that really make Klondike bars special. The addition of the puffed rice takes a bit away from the flavor of the shell, but the subtle crunch is a nice addition and helps the shell not crack so drastically. Also, I thought it added a slight salty touch. I'll give these 🍦🍦/4 ...

Sweet Me was the first brand to have their new flavors hit the shelves in the Minneapolis market, which makes sense since they are based in St. Paul! AND they have SEVEN new flavors that all sound amazing. I picked up Red Velvet Cake as well as Lemon Bar and Apple Pie, so look for those reviews soon. Sweet Me Creamery's Red Velvet Cake is Red velvet cake flavored ice cream with white chocolatey flakes and a cream cheese frosting swirl. There are two elements that make up any Red Velvet flavor. A chocolate base (cake, cookie, ice cream, etc....) dyed red and a cream cheese frosting. Since the base is really just chocolate, when people say they like Red Velvet, they really mean they like the cream cheese frosting (or the chocolate/cream cheese combo). They may not know  that's what they mean, but it is. Weirdly, I have never seen a 'chocolate and cream cheese icing' flavor. Somehow the red dye makes the combination socially acceptable. Sweet Me's red velvet...

While researching Pearson's Candy Company, the St. Paul-based candy company who makes Salted Nut Rolls, I learned that they purchased the Bit-O-Honey brand from Nestle's in 2013. Bit-O-Honey are such a mystery to me. I'm sure you received them in your Halloween haul as a child, but can you remember which house gave them out? Can you remember ever seeing them for sale? EERIE. Sorry for going off on a bit(-o-honey) of a tangent there, the ice cream flavor I'm reviewing today is not , in fact, Bit-O-Honey, but rather Salted Nut Roll from Kemp's. Salted nut rolls are definitely a Minnesota regionalism. They are salty peanuts stuck to a sweet nougat or peanut butter center. True story, I eat SO MANY Salted Nut Rolls. Basically, anytime I don't bring enough afternoon snacks (which is a lot, I'm a very hungry person) I buy a Salted Nut Roll from the vending machine. It has almost as much protein as the vending machine protein bars, it's only slightly higher-...

Kemps' ice creams really run the gamut of quality. Some are phenomenal (omg, their YO2 line) and some less so. Even within the Yogurt Shop line, there is a huge range.  Sadly, Yogurt Shop Fudge Brownie Cookie Dough is at the low quality end of the range.  This flavor is Chocolate and vanilla frozen yogurt with a fudge swirl, cookie dough and brownies topped with semi sweet chocolate curls. Every element of this flavor was sub par. First, can we please just do away with chocolate curls. Almost without fail they are weirdly waxy and you have to be really careful you don't spill them everywhere since they just sit on top of the ice cream. If your name is Fudge Brownie Cookie Dough, you should really, really have substantial fudge brownie and cookie dough chunks. I honestly can't recall if I got any fudge brownie chunks. I got a few cookie dough chunks, but they were SO TINY! Itsy-bitsy cookie dough spheres without much flavor. Teensy-weensy flavorless dough ...