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...

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...

Dearest Readers, I apologize. I have gotten mega behind on reviews the last few weeks, so be prepared for a review dump the next couple of days. I usually try not to get behind, but it has been SO WARM here in Iowa that I've been spending lots of time outside and lots of time eating ice cream, but not very much time reviewing ice cream. Tonight I have for you another from the Thelma's line up, so those of you who aren't in Iowa can be jealous of our weather (over 60 degrees the last few days) and our ice cream. This treat has chocolate ice cream sandwiched between peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I'll start with the ice cream. The chocolate was quite sweet and milky, nothing too impressive. Of course, with Thelma's the ice cream is not the main attraction, but usually the ice cream is pretty solid. This ice cream was still solid, but not the best of the Thelma's line up. However, the cookies were as delicious as always. My favorite part about th...

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 wa...

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 ...

Soooooooooooo, confession time.  I've lived in Minneapolis and attended the University of Minnesota for nearly 3 years and didn't know that the U of M sold their own dairy products.  I'm a bad adopted Minnesotan.  Every week, on Wednesday from 2pm-5pm, you can go to the Dairy and Meat Salesroom in Room 166 the Andrew Boss Lab of Meat Sciences on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus and purchase cheeses, ice creams, frozen yogurts, and meats produced on campus by students, faculty, and staff.  (Side note, can I please come over and play?) Lizzy loves meat! Lizzy and I went while she was visiting for spring break.  They had about 10 flavors to choose from in both half galls ($6.75) and pints ($3.50).  We chose two flavors and have a review of the first, Coffee Cappuccino Chip for you today.  This flavor is Coffee base ice cream with cappuccino and chocolate chips Madeline's take: This was not the strongest coffee ice cream I ha...

When Madeline came to visit Iowa City back in October, the number of flavors of Thelma's Treats ice cream sandwiches at my HyVee had diminished from five to two. I was quite scared eventually they would disappear altogether. However, my fears have been proven to be for naught. Recently two seasonal flavors of Thelma's were added to the shelves! There is this Double Chocolate Peppermint flavor and an eggnog flavor. I'm not an eggnog fan to begin with, and I've had quite the traumatic experience with eggnog. So, I'm not sure if I can bring myself to try the eggnog flavor, but we'll see. The sandwich is eggnog ice cream between snickerdoodle cookies. Possibly, if you, Dearest Readers, ask pretty please with enough sugar on top, I would try them. So this treat is peppermint ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Once again, Thelma's has delivered a great ice cream sandwich. The peppermint ice cream was out of this world. It wa...

Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss! This gelato is amazing. If I had to pick only one ice cream or gelato to eat for the rest of my life this guy would definitely make the short-list of contenders.  Talenti Coffee Chocolate Chips is Bittersweet Dutch cocoa infused with Italian espresso? You can just call us the diplomats of deliciousness. What makes this gelato so amazing? 1.  The texture. It epitomizes everything I imagine when I imagine the perfect gelato texture.  It is thick and smooth and dense.  It is slicker and more custard-y than ice cream, but not oily or fatty.  Just perfection. 2. The coffee.  Really they should name this Espresso Chocolate Chip. I ate this before reading the description and was blown away by the coffee flavor.  It tasted like a rich, deep, full, smooth dark roast like the best espresso you've ever had.  It was delicately sweetened juuuuuuust to the level that's appropriate for gelato. ...

This is going to be a short and sweet review. I picked up this pint with the last of my Haagen-Dazs coupons while Brett was visiting. The $1 off two pints coupon is perfect for when Brett is visiting, because we each get to pick out a pint. This was Brett's pick. My pick was the Haagen-Dazs Limoncello Gelato. We ate this after going out to eat one night when we weren't totally in the mood for lemon gelato. Quite obviously, this is chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips. I've already reviewed Haagen-Dazs chocolate base here . I don't have more to say about it than I said already, but I will quickly sum up. Haagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream is pretty middle of the road in chocolate flavor. It is delicious, but it hits middle of the road on the milkiness/chocolate density scale. The "flavor notes" printed on the side of the pint telling you there are smokey notes in the ice cream are, in my opinion, a lie. The only difference between this pint a...

I picked up some Graeter's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough at Tim and Tom's because I thought, "What could go wrong here?"  Unfortunately, this wasn't the greatest ice cream ever.  Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible or inedible, but it should have been so much better. When I opened the pint, I was extremely excited.  It seemed like there were more chunks than there was base.  I thought this boded well for the rest of the experience, but I was mistaken.  The base was vanilla flavored I think.  I couldn't really figure it out.  It was pretty bland, and there were so many chunks it was hard to get a scoop of base by itself. The cookie dough chunks themselves were pretty excellent.  They were gritty with that sugary grittiness of real cookie dough.  They were about the size of a dime and delightfully gooey.  Unfortunately the cookie dough chunks could not hold their own against Graeter's signature chocolate chips. The chocolat...

You heard about before backpacking ice cream, you heard about during backpacking ice cream, and now it is time for after. Our last day of the trip we only had two hike 2 miles. We decided to get up on the early side so we could make it into town and have a nice brunch. There was an ice cream and candy shop right next door to where we got brunch. Although no one else got ice cream, Brett and I did. I must be converting him to my lifestyle. At Grand Lake Chocolates, there were quite a few flavor offerings; probably around twenty. However, none of them were too outrageous. I decided to get a small Espresso Chip. The base of this ice cream was a pretty standard coffee flavor. Not too strong, sweet, and creamy. As in any ice cream and candy shop combo, the chips in the flavor were quite tasty. They were small, but frequent. They were dark chocolate, but not overly bitter. They were softer and chewy, not brittle. Last, the texture of this ice cream was airy and light. I w...

Graeter's has, hands down, the best chocolate chips in the game right now. They're so good that I don't even feel the need to review their Double Chocolate Chip flavor.  I mean, you know it's going to be good.  But, dear reader, I'll review it anyway.  For you. I'll take the description from their website, because it's epic: What's better than chocolate? That's right, more chocolate! Graeter's Double Chocolate Chip Ice Cream is a decadent duet of of Belgian milk chocolate and behemoth bittersweet dark chocolate chips that will have chocolate lovers everywhere saying, "Bravo!" not once, but twice. Handcrafted, french pot ice cream that is irresistibly good! "Decadent duet."  "Behemoth." Epic.Word.Choices. They got rid of their cuted, pin-stripe containers. Sad day Normally I'm a dark chocolate fan, partially because milk chocolate is not done right most of the time.  This was not the case her...

I feel like it's been a loooooong while since I've reviewed a normal, non-core, non-limited edition, non-store exclusive Ben and Jerry's flavor, so to remedy that I have a review of Milk and Cookies. This flavor is Vanilla ice cream with a chocolate cookie swirl, chocolate chip & chocolate chocolate chip cookies. This ice cream is basically your standard cookies and cream, but on steroids.  Of course Ben & Jerry's couldn't just stop at cookies and cream, but added in a ton of mix-ins. The chocolate swirl doesn't really stay together as one piece.  Rather, small pieces of the swirl break off and are scattered throughout the pint.  This, together with the vanilla base gives off a high-quality cookie and cream vibe.  Also, I think the chocolate cookie swirl in this flavor is the grandfather of the AH-MAZING chocolate cookie butter int the new Boom Chocolatta Cookie Core flavor.  If you've had that, this swirl is similar.  There's not ...

So impromptu dance parties are a thing. Lame. (Ok not really, but wait for what is coming!) Know what's not lame? Impromptu ice cream parties. Yeah, I made that happen yesterday. I needed to go to the post office in the afternoon, but apparently the it is closed from 2-2:45pm for lunch. Which I guess makes sense so people on their normal lunch break at noon can stop by. But whatever.  I got to the post office at 2:10 so I needed to kill some time. I needed to buy a new notebook, so I headed to the Target about a block away. I'm not super familiar with the layout of this particular Target, and didn't know where the school supplies were, so I just wandered.  WHAT DO YOU KNOW I ENDED UP BY THE ICE CREAM HOW DID THAT EVEN HAPPEN I HAVE NO IDEA DON'T BLAME ME BLAME TARGET. Something amazing caught my eye. A Talenti Target exclusive flavor that sounded amazing and that I hadn't seen before.  I think of these flavors as 'ghost flavors.' They're not listed on...

Hazelnut.  Hazelnut hazelnut hazelnut.  Hazelnut hazelnut hazelnut hazelnut hazelnut.  Hazelnut. Seriously, if you are a hazelnut fan, drop what you are doing and go find a pint of Talenti's new Hazelnut Chocolate Chip gelato.  Oh my god, it was so good. From Talenti's website: We loved our creamy, traditional, perfect hazelnut gelato so much that we had to give it some friends.  And by friends, we mean tons of roasted hazelnuts and bits of rich chocolate chips.  Giving - isn't tha what love is all about? I think the description above got it exactly right.  Talenti's Hazelnut flavor is very traditional version of a very traditional gelato flavor.  Sometimes the best thing is to throw tradition out of the window. The hazelnut flavor here is way better than in Talenti's Hazelnut.  PROBABLY BECAUSE THERE ARE LITERAL CHUNKS OF HAZELNUT IN THIS FLAVOR. You read that right.  Chunks of hazelnut.  Not only were there ...