The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Nana Banana, banana ice cream with salted caramel almond butter swirl, is the second of two flavors I picked up from the new Target x Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) collab. You can get my general thought on the MOIC in my  review of Piñata , but to sum up, it irks me that the MOIC is not, in fact, a museum and yet calls themselves a museum. I was unimpressed with the quality of Piñata, and it's way too easy to make a bad banana ice cream, so my expectations for Nana Banana were quite low.  The quality of the base was not great. It had a noticeably low fat content and as a result was hard and icy and melted down into a runny liquid. Despite that, the banana flavor of the base was not bad. It could have been a bit stronger, but it tasted like real banana and not banana flavoring. The salted caramel almond butter swirl had huge potential. It had a strong taste of almond butter - the the more complex and almost floral taste of lightly roasted almonds. The salted caramel added...

Life is basically just screaming into the void, so I'm going to go ahead and scream this review of Talenti Almond Butter & Honey Special Batch gelato into the void of it's old news and this point and maybe not even available anymore. Talenti says: We blend almond butter with fresh milk and cream to create a creamy almond butter gelato before topping it off with a dash of salt and a swirl of wildflower honey. It's very hard to categorize what makes a Talenti success. They're generally terrible at mix-ins, but their chocolate flakes are divine. This makes you think their mix-in free flavors would generally be better than the non-mix in flavors, but they have some terrible mix-in free flavors. Their nut flavors are generally pretty good, but some, like Pistachio, are just meh. Whatever the recipe for Talenti success, Almond Butter & Honey achieves it. The almond butter base had a light, delicate sweetness with almost a floral hint to it. This was compleme...

Wowzers. Madeline and I have been traveling all over the place having such fantastic ice cream adventures! Right now I am currently in my second field site, a location in New England. I have been wanting to try Gelato Fiasco FOREVER after On Second Scoop reviewed a bunch of their flavors, including Sriracha Peanut. When I heard an ice cream company was making a Sriracha Peanut flavor, I KNEW I needed to try this brand. However, I have never lived in an area that sells Gelato Fiasco, or so I thought. While writing this post, I looked at Gelato Fiasco's distribution map, and while they aren't sold anywhere in St. Louis or anywhere in the entire state of Minnesota, they actually do sell in a store in Cedar Rapids! I will definitely be going there soon when I get back to Iowa! But in the mean time, I picked up a pint of Almond Butter Chocolate Chunk (too bad the grocery store by where I am staying didn't have the Sriracha Peanut). This flavor is described as Roasted...

Kyle picked me up from a ballet class the other night, and on the way home we decided to stop for gas.  After we fueled up, we headed inside to pick up a treat for the night.  Kyle headed straight for the gummy candy while I decided to check out the ice cream selection, as I do at every new store I go to.  I was pleasantly surprised.  The ice cream selection was huge for a gas station. Recently our local grocery store changed ownership and the new store has a much poorer selection of Talenti gelato than the old store.  This gas station had what I would call a medium to good selection of Talenti, but definitely better than the new grocery store.  Also, THEY HAD AN AMAZING ICE CREAM BRAND THAT I HAD NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. I picked up two flavors from the new-to-me brand 2nd Street Creamery.  These ice cream flavors are inspired by different stories.  For example,  Almond Butter Hazelnut Fudge, the flavor I am reviewing today, reads: ...