The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Alas!! I have done it!!! I have complete the epic, months-long quest to try all of the Haagen-Dazs Artisan Collection! After a treacherous trek across town to the HyVee on the other side of town, losing hope while wandering the maze-like, only slightly-different layout of this grocery store, I finally found it. The Banana Rum Jam flavor, the only remaining missing link. The completion of this quest will bring eternal fame and glory to the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog!! And what I mean by eternal fame and glory is being able to say we are not the actual worst ice cream bloggers out there. Most other ice cream blogs had tried all of the artisan collection flavors months and months ago. You know, like, when they were still new. However, Madeline can't find the Applewood Smoked Caramel Almond flavor (which I did when I first moved to Iowa City) and I couldn't find the Banana Rum Jam (which Madeline did back in May).  And what I mean by couldn't find, is hadn't look exte...

I only have one more flavor in the Artisan Collection to try! The latest flavor I tried is Banana Rum Jam a collaboration with  The Jam Stand  a Brooklyn-based jam company.  Haagen-Dazs describes this ice cream as Inspired by Drunken Monkey jam from The Jam Stand in Brooklyn, this uniquely flavored recipe combines a banana, rum and lime swirl into smooth vanilla bean ice cream. After reading the description of this ice cream and the description of the inspiration jam, this became one of the flavors from the Artisan Collection I was most excited about.  Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my expectations.  It wasn't a bad ice cream by any means, my expectations were just very different from reality. First the great parts of this ice cream. I love the way Haagen-Dazs executed the banana flavor in this ice cream.  Most often, when ice cream companies do a banana flavor they go for a straight banana base which can be overwhelming.  Instead,...