The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

In 2015, Lizzy predicted that alcoholic ice cream would be the new ice cream trend of 2016. Turns out, she was a year early in her predictions, and 2017 is the year that multiple mainstream brands came out with alcohol-flavored ice creams. Both Haagen-Dazs and Ben and Jerry's, arguably the two behemoths of grocery store super-premium brands, released a bourbon ice cream.  Haagen-Dazs has Bourbon Pecan Praline, nutty pecan pralines  and pools of brown sugar bourbon folded into bourbon ice cream.   Bourban Pecan Praline is a very grown-up flavor. Bourbon is a very sweet and smooth alcohol, which makes it the idea alcoholic ice cream flavor. The bourbon base had these sweet and smooth qualities, but it also had that uniquely alcoholic burn that you could both smell and taste.  The pecan pralines and brown sugar were the perfect mix-ins. The flavors were distinct from, complementary to, and not overpowered by the strong bourbon base.  The pecans were coat...

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 ...

I love shoppes. After 24 years of life, I'm still not entirely sure what the difference is between a shop and shoppe, but I do know that pronouncing the extra "p" and "e" makes you way more annoying. Which is always my goal. Anyway, Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream is a rather popular ice cream brand out of Madison, Wisconsin. There are Chocolate Shoppes in Madison and other scoop shops around the Midwest sell the brand. My new roommate just moved to Iowa City from Madison, and knowing I wrote and ice cream blog, brought me some Chocolate Shoppe Ice Cream all the way from Madison! (Best roommate ever or best roommate ever?) The flavor he brought is called Exhausted Parent and is described as Bourbon-spiked espresso ice cream swirled with bittersweet chocolate chunks . While this ice cream sounds delicious, if having children induces one to drink bourbon with a shot of espresso out of necessity not enjoyment, then I'll pass. Also, would that even ...

For many people, March is one of the best months of the year because of March Madness. Now that I live in Iowa, I would count myself among this group. And no, this is not because of the basketball tournament, seeing as Iowa was trounced by Villanova in the second round. The reason I, as an Iowa resident, now love March is because Yotopia has their own March Madness. I topped my froyo kiwi, strawberries, and butterscotch chips, which went great with the Bourbon Caramel. But I mostly ate the toppings separately from the froyo so I could truly appreciate and evaluate the flavors! Every two days, Yotopia is having two battles between two flavors. They started with a total of twelve flavors, Irish Mint vs. Irish Cream Cupcake, White Chocolate Raspberry vs. Cherry Vanilla, Taro Root vs. Honey Lavender, Chai Tea Spice vs. Ginger Lemongrass, Hibiscus Guava vs. Peach Tea, and Nutella vs. Bourbon Caramel. The first two match ups passed and I didn't get a chance to try them and Yotopi...

Bread pudding is not a dessert Madeline and I grew up eating a lot of. And to be honest, the name of the dessert still does not sound appetizing to me. The first time I'd heard of it I was quite confused as to what it was. Was it pudding with chunks of bread in it, like rice pudding? Bread flavored pudding? Bread with pudding on top? When bread pudding was described to me, bread with milk, butter, eggs, cinnamon, sugar, etc. poured on top and baked, the reality of the dessert didn't sound much more appetizing than any of the possibilities I had imagined. Luckily, I tried it anyway. Bread pudding is delicious, and I don't know of any other ice cream company making a bread pudding ice cream! This flavor is described as Our Version of a New Orleans Classic Dessert has Chunks of White Chocolate Bread Pudding That Hints of Custard and Bourbon Sauce.  Upon first glance at this pint, I didn't see much of a bourbon sauce swirl, but upon eating the ice cream, I definit...

This is the last review of ice cream and gelato I ate in Boston! After Madeline reviewed and enjoyed Ciao Bella's seasonal gelato flavors and seeing lots of interesting looking flavors on the Ciao Bella website, I wanted to try more Ciao Bella! One of the flavors I was most excited about trying was the Bourbon Caramel Chocolate! And lo and behold, there it was in the grocery store Brett shops at. The other day, Madeline and I were speculating about what is going to be the big ice cream trend in 2016. My bets are on alcohol in ice cream, whether with actual alcohol, like Clementine's, or with the flavor of an alcoholic beverage, like this gelato. Boozy floats are already pretty popular at scoop shops and even Ben & Jerry's has a beer flavor. Will we see more companies jump on the alcohol ice cream bandwagon? After eating this flavor, I hope so! The description of this flavor reads  Our Bourbon Caramel Chocolate gelato combines sweet, creamy caramel with a smo...

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know about Mallard ice cream in Bellingham and their crazy flavors! Although other ice cream shops have gotten into the crazy flavors game, no other shop I've seen has quite the extensive, creative, and quality menu like Mallard has. Obviously the highlight of my trip was picking up some Mallard ice cream.  I was at the shop with my uncle, cousin, and his girl friend. Me, my cousin, and his girl friend each picked out a flavor for a hand packed pint to take home. When we walked in the store and I saw the grape flavor listed, I was incredibly intrigued. I hadn't ever seen or heard of a grape ice cream before. Of course this started me thinking. Why hadn't I ever seen a grape ice cream before? Why do some fruits get turned into ice cream, but not others? When I pointed out the flavor to the rest of the crew, they did not think the flavor sounded tasty. From the small sample I had in the store, I thought it was delici...

I'm currently in Arvada, Colorado visiting my grandparents. Obviously, any time I go anywhere, I make sure to visit an ice cream shop.  Scrumptious  is located in Olde Town Arvada.  I didn't know this going in, but Scrumptious is a micro creamery (Lizzy gives you the definition  here ) and was voted Denver's best ice cream.  These two facts help explain the excellent experience I had yesterday afternoon. The whole posse, consisting of myself, my father, my aunt, my grandmother, and my grandfather, rolls through the front door.  We scope out the flavor menu.  There are some old standards like chocolate and strawberry.  There are some interesting flavors like white chocolate raspberry.  Then there are some mystery flavors with names that give no hint to the contents of the ice cream.  One of these mystery flavors was 'blackout.' We asked the ice cream maiden (there needs to be a word like 'barista' but for ice cream scoopers) to describ...

My order of 5 pints back in April from Clementine's included 2 boozy flavors. I chose this flavor not because I'm a huge bourbon fan or anything; like lets be honest I'm not and never will be that sophisticated. I chose it because pie. I ate this pint really not too long after I ordered it, but just because of different things going on, it took me a while to get this post out. The description of this flavor is A Southern tradition, vanilla bourbon ice cream with chunks of pecan pie and chocolate chip pie.  But before I jump right in with the review, I am going to tell you a bit about Clementine's naughty, aka boozy, ice cream. Clementine's has a unique process of making their ice cream boozy that they are actually currently working on getting trademarked. If you weren't aware, making alcoholic ice cream is really difficult. Why? Science. Adding alcohol lowers the freezing point of ice cream, so if you add enough alcohol for the ice cream to actually int...