The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

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 ...

Today I've got a double review of some Kemp's limited edition flavors. Kemp's is a dairy company based in Minnesota and recently released a line-up of four Minnesota-inspired ice creams.  Sadly, I went to the store a few days ago and didn't see them, but you may still be able to find them. I bought 2 out of the 4 flavors in mid-October which must have been pretty close to the end of their run at my local Cub Foods. I picked up the two fruity flavors: Cherry and Spoon and You Betcha Berry. Cherry and Spoon is  vanilla ice cream, cherries and brownie bites with swirls of chocolaty fudge.  So you might be wondering, 'What the heck is the deal with the name Cherry and Spoon?'  Spoonbridge and Cherry  is a sculpture at the Walker Garden that has somehow become  the  Minneapolis image on all Minneapolis promotional material (like the arch is for St. Louis, or the Golden Gate Bridge is for San Francisco). I don't really get it, though. It's jus...

Raspberry and Chocolate is the second flavor in the duo of Kemp's Frozen Yogurt Shop flavors I recently purchased.  I was really, really excited about this flavor because lately I've been in the mood for fruity ice cream, but it let me down a bit.  This is described as Creamy raspberry frozen yogurt with thick chocolatey swirl with semi-sweet chocolate curls topping. Photo featuring my lovely Red Fuji poster. The texture was the same amazing smooth, creamy, very-similar-to-ice-cream texture I have come to expect from the Kemp's Frozen Yogurt Shop line.  It was maybe a touch icier than the two flavors I have tried previously, but nothing like normal store-bought frozen yogurt. Unfortunately the flavor was the disappointing part.  The raspberry flavor by itself was pretty good and the flavor of the chocolate swirl by itself was pretty good, but they clashed with each other quite a bit. The raspberry was on the tarter side (as opposed to the sweeter side...

A few months ago I tried the Peanut Butter Cup flavor from the new-ish Kemp's Frozen Yogurt Shop line.  I enjoyed it thoroughly, so when I saw these babies were on sale, I picked up a couple flavors. Vanilla Salted Caramel was one of the flavors I picked up.  It is described as Creamy vanilla frozen yogurt with thick salted caramel revel with dark and white chocolate curls topping. When I first read this description, I thought the word 'revel' was being used as a noun.  I did't know what caramel revel is, and Google didn't seem to know either.  I wondered if this was a typo and thought was supposed to be swirl.  I'm an idiot, and Lizzy informed me 'revel' was being used as a verb in this context.  Duh. Out of all the Frozen Yogurt Shop flavors, I was least excited about the Vanilla Salted Caramel, but my options at the store were limited.  Vanilla can be so bland, and I'm a bit over salted caramel.  This exceeded all expectations and was...

Today is national ice cream sandwich day!  I'm definitely eating a standard, American, no-frills, from-the-ice-cream-van ice cream sandwich today, but in the meantime, I have a review of Kemp's Kempswiches, which I had last week.  These are described as Creamy vanilla ice cream between two chewy chocolate chip cookies and rolled in chocolate chips. I have been craving a chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich for literally months.  MONTHS.  This is ridiculous, because all I had to do to satiate this craving was drive 5 minutes to the grocery store and pick some up.  I even knew that the grocery store had these exact treats! But I didn't until recently.  These sold for somewhere between $4 and $5, and with 4 sandwiches in the pack, they rang in at a little over a dollar a sandwich. Bottom line first.  These were good, but all of the flavors could have had a bit more punch.  The first cookie I had tasted a little like freezer, but I ...

Guuuuuyyyssssssss. I'm so lazy. I've done seriously nothing since I finished grading finals. I finished this container of frozen yogurt at least a week ago and am just now writing about it. Uggghhhhhh, I don't even want to write this review even though I love writing about ice cream!  It's Newton's first law of laziness, yo. But, I shall power on for you, dearest reader! The frozen yogurt I am putting off reviewing is Kemp's Frozen Yogurt Shop Peanut Butter Cup.  This is described as Creamy chocolate frozen yogurt with thick peanut butter swirl and chunks of peanut butter cup topping. I've seen this line of frozen yogurt around for a while, but I think it's relatively new (like at least under a year old).  I have been meaning to pick one of these up for a while, and finally got around to it.  I decided on the chocolate peanut butter because I wanted to make sure I got something Kyle would like.  Also, who doesn't love the chocolate and pe...

When I picked up the 1.5qt Kemp's Cookies 'n' Cream, I also picked up a 1.5qt of Kemp's Caribou Coffee Java Chip because there was a buy one get one free coupon and obviously I take advantage of this whenever possible.  This flavor is described as Dark chocolate chunks in creamy coffee ice cream. My experiences with Caribou Coffee: I've had Caribou Coffe granola bars which were in grocery stores when I was in middle and high school but have since been discontinued.  These were really amazing.  I've had multiple pastries from the Caribou Coffee in downtown Minneapolis as it's right on the way to dance and sometimes I need a pre-ballet bear claw.  There were good, but nothing extraordinary.  I know I've had a dark roast coffee from the same Caribou, but I remember nothing about it.  This probably means its better than the burnt swill that Starbucks serves, but not as good as coffee from some of the small local roasteries I've had. Unfortu...

I don't think there's such a thing as a bad cookies and cream ice cream; it's incredibly hard to fuck up, and fuck it up Kemp's does not.  On their website, Kemp's describes this flavor as Chocolate sandwich cookies in vanilla ice cream. Keepin' it simple.  This is one of the ice creams in Kemp's 'Old Fashioned' line.  The whole point of this line is to offer classic flavors that bring back memories of delightful ice cream moments from your past.  Or something like that.  I threw away the pint without taking a picture of the blurb about their Old Fashioned ice creams.  Cookies and Cream definitely fits the category of classic ice cream flavor. On to the review!  My overall impression was that this was a very solid slightly-above-middle-of-the-pack Cookies and Cream Flavor.  I think in the future, it would be a great ice cream to use as the base for a sundae.  It's good enough to hold its own, but wouldn't overshadow the rest ...

Where the heck are all of the seasonal pumpkin flavors this year?  I know they're out there.  I know Ben and Jerry’s made a Pumpkin Cheesecake flavor and Talenti made a Pumpkin Pie flavor, but they NEVR showed up at my local grocery store.  I mean COME ON.  I did, however, find Kemp’s Pumpkin Pie, a limited edition seasonal flavor. This was described as Pumpkin Ice cream swirled with real crust pieces. This ice cream was pretty good.  I didn’t realize until I got home that it was reduced fat.  (Ewwwwww!)  Normally I wouldn’t buy something reduced fat, but this wasn’t that bad.  The texture wasn’t as un-creamy as reduced-fat ice cream sometimes is.  Honestly, if I didn’t know it was reduced fat before I tried it I probably wouldn’t have guess.d I could tell it was pumpkin flavored, which is more than I can say for some pumpkin ice creams that lean too heavily on the ‘spice’ part of pumpkin-spice.  As far as the spi...

I'm aliiiiiive! I feel like I haven't posted in SO long.  Part of that is because I don't have internet at home, but I should get that sometime this month (fingers crossed!)  Time to rejoin the 21st century! Today I have a review of another Kemp's flavor (and there's yet another to come!), Black Raspberry Swirl. The first thing that hit me when I opened this carton was the color of the ice cream.  It was an insanely  bright and vibrant purple.  This flavor is described as Black Raspberry flavored ice cream and vanilla ice cream with chocolate chunks. The short story is that this ice cream is good, but not great, but good for the price.  I probably won't buy it again, but if I was on an ice cream budget (I pity the poor soul who is) I would probably turn consistently to Kemp's. Kemp's ice cream gives the most beautiful scoops ever. The vanilla ice cream was good, but not earth shattering.  The black raspberry ice cream tasted like ra...

My grocery store FINALLY got some seasonal/limited edition items.  When I went yesterday to check out the freezer section and saw that they had B&J's Candy Bar Pie and Haagen-Dazs delicious, amazing holiday flavor Peppermint Bark.  I obviously picked up a pint of this and the review will be coming soon.  But, they have sucked super hard at getting any pumpkin/fall flavored things.  I mean COME ON!  Kyle thinks they'll get some in November, but I, the eternal pessimist, doubt they will get any in at all ever. Anyway, on to the review.  If you don't live in the upper Midwest, you may as well move along because you can't get Kemp's ice cream.  HA. A few weeks ago I picked up a couple Kemp's flavors, one of which was Maple Nut.  I picked this up because I thought it was a seasonal flavor, but it's not!  It's awesome that you can get this year-round. This flavor comes in a 56oz size in a square cardboard carton.  If you are a map...

Today I have a new to me brand, Kemp's Ice Cream.  I have seen various Kemp's dairy products in the refrigerated section at the grocery stores since I moved to Minnesota.  I have so far avoided picking up any Kemp's ice cream because I thought it was a store brand.  Kyle wanted to pick up some ice cream after we went salsa dancing yesterday. (He knows better than to dig in to my stash without my permission!)  At our local Cub Foods he picked out a 1.5 quart container of the flavor Classic Chocolate Cupcake for about $5 (this was the sale price, I think the regular price is $6). From the image on the front of the carton it is clear that the 'classic chocolate cupcakes' in question are Hostess Cupcakes.  The ice cream is described as Chocolate cake flavored ice cream swirled with white frosting and sprinkled with chocolate cupcake pieces. I have to say, this was a pretty faithful representation of the 'classic chocolate cupcake.'  The first thing I...