The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Man, oh man. Winter break was such an exciting time for ice cream! St. Louis has so many exciting ice cream spots! From ice cream made with liquid nitrogen, to boozy ice cream, to froyo shops, to a burger place also popular for its homemade ice cream! Yep, it is finally time the sisters at Big Muddy took a trip to Bailey's Range in downtown St. Louis. The last weekend we were in St. Louis, Madeline and I ate at Bailey's Range with some of my friends from college to have an early celebration for my birthday! In addition to lots of different burgers, Bailey's has 16 ice cream flavors and 3 sorbet flavors to choose from! Not bad for a sit-down burger joint. There are also two flavors are featured in their "Battle" section, which rotate frequently, the idea being that the ice cream that is less popular and loses the battle gets replaced by a new flavor. The two flavors in the "Battle" section when we were there were Mulled Wine and Cookie Dough. We divv...

Right before I ran the Go! St. Louis Marathon I asked the internet what ice cream I should eat the day before the race. Someone suggested Clementine's ice cream. I looked the place up and saw it didn't open until May, so just crossed that one off the list. However, in the days after the marathon, I found and followed Clementine's on Twitter. We started tweeting back and forth and they asked me if I had ever tried Bourbon Kentucky Pie or the Salted Crack Caramel. Obviously, I replied and was like, "No! How do I get it in my mouth?!" (Since Clementine's makes naughty ice cream I am in no way obligated to make this post PG.) The answer shone down from the ice cream heavens: Delivery!! Clementine's will deliver ice cream to your door. There is nothing more I could ask for in life than ice cream being delivered to my doorstep. When I called Tamara Keefe, the owner of Clementine's, to place my order, we ended up having a pretty long conversation about Cl...

A few days before I raced the Go! St. Louis Marathon I raised quite the social media hubbub by asking for suggestions on what ice cream I should eat the day before. The suggestions were FroYo (kinda lame because that's not ice cream), Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams (not actually open in St. Louis yet), Clementine's Ice Cream (also not actually open yet), Fritz's Frozen Custard (also not ice cream but a more than acceptable suggestion), and Mr. Wizard's Frozen Custard. I also had two flavor suggestions, peanut butter dark chocolate and coffee. I ended up being a jerk (sorta sorry but not really) and not really taking any of those suggestions. A friend texted me her suggestion, instead of commenting on the post, which was Serendipity Homemade Ice Cream. I ended up staying at my parents' house that weekend, instead of my boyfriend's, because he got really sick. I had to go to the marathon expo to pick up my bib, and Serendipity was right on the way from my parent...

Ok, I was SO excited to try Ices Plain and Fancy.  The day Lizzy, Brett, and I went to Crown Candy Kitchen the original plan was to go to Ices Plain and Fancy, but it was closed.  Such sadness. Two days later Lizzy, Brett, Kyle and I one more time made the trek out to Ices Plain and fancy.  I had such a hard time deciding what to get.  I wanted one of everything on the menu.  They have a whole long list of boozy ices.  The two that stood out to me were one made with ginger beer and one (for 21+ only) made with Left Hand Brewing's Milk Stout (I think it was the milk stout, it may have been a different LHB beer).  These are on my to-try list next time I visit home. Since this was my first time at Ices Plain and Fancy, I decided to try a 'simple' ice, and decided on the Salted Dulce de Leche Custard flavor.  From what I could tell, this was either a vanilla or very lightly caramel-flavored base.  What made this outstanding were the toppings...

It's about time. A review of Crown Candy Kitchen. There are so many fabulous places to get ice cream in St. Louis and the fact that Madeline and I don't actually live in St. Louis any more makes it quite difficult to review them. Yesterday, Madeline, my boyfriend, Brett, and I took a trip up to the Old North side of St. Louis to visit Crown Candy Kitchen, an adorable old-fashioned soda fountain that makes amazing candy, ice cream, and sandwiches. Crown Candy Kitchen opened in 1913 and is actually St. Louis' oldest soda fountain. Not to go into too much St. Louis history, but these days a lot more people know a thing or two about North St. Louis than they used to. I'll just say that it's kind of awkward that there are all these county white people on this one block of North St. Louis. Just look at the section of this map that says, "Out of Place White People Eating Ice Cream." That would be Crown Candy Kitchen. A sort of blurry picture of the m...

Two weeks ago I finally had the opportunity to check out Ices Plain and Fancy. Ices Plain and Fancy (can I just call it IPF for the rest of this post?) is a new ice cream shop in St. Louis. It opened this summer and I heard about it in late August. Not long after I heard about this unique little ice cream shop, Madeline's friend from high school, Zach, requested that she review IPF. I decided to just take over so Zach didn't have to wait until Thanksgiving to get a review. IPF is in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis. Brett and I hopped over there after a nice afternoon at the Botanical gardens. As we drove up, we thought Siri might have been leading us astray. We were in a totally residential area; no other shops or stores in sight. I honestly loved the location of IPF. It livened up the block and it is so nice that it is so close to places like the Botanical Gardens, Tower Grove Park, but it still seems hidden away. Now to actually talk about ice cream. There are no...

Located just East of St. Louis University, The Fountain on Locust is one of my favorite St. Louis restaurants. They boast great food, great ice cream, fun cocktails and ICE CREAM COCKTAILS! Combining ice cream and alcohol is really an amazing and wonderful thing and I don't quite understand why it isn't done more often. So to continue to describe The Fountain on Locust, which is really tough because there are so many cool things about it. First, the interior is all art-deco-y which is super cool, and has made The Fountain the most photographed restaurant in St. Louis! They also can serve you the world's smallest ice cream cone and world's smallest ice cream sundae. How cool is that?! The only problem is, their ice cream treats are sooo good you would never want to order just a little bit! For one, some of their sundaes are made with Zanzibar chocolate ice cream (which I think I talked about in my Cookie Dough Creations post), which is so unique and amazing. They als...

Man, Lizzy keeps beating me to the punch on these shared reviews! As you already know I spent a lovely 8 days at home in St. Louis, during which I got to see Lizzy.  Before I came home we were drawing up a list of potential ice cream shops to visit.  (These things take hours of serious planning.)  We both agreed that, no matter what, we had to stop by Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. Ted Drewes is a St. Louis institution.  I literally cannot think of one native St. Louisan I know who would not put Ted Drewes in the top-3 of must-do attractions when visiting St. Louis. As you can tell by the name, Ted Drewes does not serve ice cream, they serve frozen custard, which has more cream and egg yolk than ice cream.  Ted Drewes serves a multitude of different frozen custard sundaes, but their signature offering is the 'concrete.'  A concrete is served in the same type of cup as a milkshake but is much, much thicker in texture.  It is in fact, so thick that yo...

Dearest Readers, it's the moment you have all been waiting for.  It is also feels like this is the moment I've been training for my whole life. Your favorite ice cream duo since Ben and Jerry finally reviews home-town favorite Ted Drewes. Now, of course, Ted Drewes doesn't serve any ice cream; they serve frozen custard! For those of you that aren't from St. Louis or Wisconsin (another spot where this wonderful frozen dairy dessert is popular), you might not really know what the difference between ice cream and frozen custard is! I'll tell you. If you've had frozen custard, you'll know that it's a lot creamier than ice cream. There are a few reasons frozen custard is creamier than ice cream. First, frozen custard contains at least 1.4% egg yolks, way more than ice cream. Second, frozen custard contains at least 10% butter fat, also way more than ice cream. Last but not least, frozen custard contains less air than ice cream. Because of these three th...

Oh what can I say about Cherokee street, a street where hipster culture and hispanic culture mash lovingly into one another with taquerias next to discount furniture stores next to an employee-owned anarchist bakery.  That's just St. Louis for you.  The street's vibe is more down and dirty than the curated hipster experience shown whenever NBC Nightly News showcases the latest artisanal mayonnaise craze exploding out of Brooklyn. I Scream Cakes is definitely on the hipster end of this spectrum.  They make custom cakes as well as functioning as an ice cream scoop shop.  The first thing I noticed when I entered the shop was that these ice cream makers were not kidding around with their flavors.  I think mint-chocolate chip and vanilla bean were the only 'ordinary' flavors on offer that day.  You can see why I put ordinary in quotation marks by reading Lizzy's review of mint chocolate chip ice cream  here. When Lizzy and I walked in the woman worki...

Many of my St. Louis readers are probably looking at the title and thinking I've gone on some fabulous travel adventure and had a chance to stop at some wonderful little ice cream shop in some other state. Nope. Nope nope. I Scream Cakes is the hidden gem of Cherokee Street in South St. Louis. I had never heard of I Scream Cakes until this summer. I thought I knew all the best places to get my favorite food in my favorite city. So maybe it was that this bakery and ice cream shop just focused more on cake, and ice cream was more of a side venture. Or maybe their ice cream wasn't that good. There had to be some sort of explanation as to how this little shop had been flying under my radar. Well after my sister and I visited yesterday, I can tell you the explanation has nothing to do with the quality of the ice cream. Or the quality of the service, for that matter. When Madeline and I walked into this brightly colored store, I, at least, was overwhelmed by the many intriguing fla...

Here is my take on our St. Louis Ice Cream Extravaganza. As Lizzy mentioned, our first stop was newly opened Jilly's Ice Cream Bar.  On their website they state that "Moaning out loud is totally acceptable."  That definitely happened.  Lizzy and I shared the Lucky Charms and Gooey Butter Cake flavors.  Lizzy covered the Lucky Charms flavor pretty well, so I will talk about the Gooey Butter Cake ice cream.  Officially named Gooey Butter Brownie Batter, this is described as Gooey Butter Cake ice cream, Gooey Butter Cake chunks, vanilla cake morsels, brownie batter swirl. This ice cream is totally rad, and is something I had been waiting my whole life for.  In fact, a few months ago, I posted a facebook status about how awesome gooey butter cake ice cream would be. For those not in the know,  gooey butter cake  is a St. Louis dessert delicacy.  It was supposedly invented when a baker included too much butter in a recipe for yellow ...

After leaving Minneapolis, Madeline spent ONE WHOLE DAY in the lovely Lou before heading back to Minneapolis. Obviously we knew we would have to make this day an ice cream extravaganza. As I mentioned a little while ago, Jilly's Cupcakes was opening an ice cream bar. There has been a lot of buzz on St. Louis social media about the place. After the flavor list came out and it included My Lucky Charms as a June Chef/Fan Favorite, I knew we had to hit this place up in our ice cream extravaganza. I was obsessed with Lucky Charms as a kid. My love for Lucky Charms went beyond just being my favorite cereal. Seriously, the best Christmas gift I ever got was a special edition box of Lucky Charms that let you color in the box yourself. Look at the cool decor at Jilly's! Ice cream scoops! At Jilly's Ice Cream bar we got two scoops for only $4.50, one of the My Lucky Charms and the other of Gooey Butter Brownie Batter. The My Lucky Charms flavor is described as: Lucky Charms C...