The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Look at me. I'm finally with it. Super hip. Up on all the new exclusive ice cream flavors. Just kidding. Madeline is the most hip ice cream cat around and found the new Ben & Jerry's Wal-Mart exclusive flavor before I even had it on my to-buy list. But to be honest, nobody in the ice cream world was too excited about Confetti Cake. Why? Just read on my friends. This flavor is described as Vanilla Cake Batter Ice Cream with Sprinkles, Cake Pieces & Vanilla Frosting Swirls.  Sound familiar? It should. This flavor is incredibly similar to the incredibly popular, limited-edition Ben & Jerry's flavor Cake My Day, which came out this past spring. Basically Confetti Cake is Cake My Day minus the raspberry swirl and plus sprinkles. Or a combination of Cake My Day and Cotton Candy, another Wal-Mart exclusive. Now if you recall, Madeline and I both loved Cake My Day. In fact I gave it 4/4 cones! (Madeline reviewed it before we had the cone system in place.) So I...

Wow I have been slacking on the ice cream reviews. Partly because I spent this past weekend in Colorado for a wedding eating lots of pastries and cake and such and not ice cream. But mostly because finals just ate my soul and I didn't have time to review any ice cream. Luckily, when I was almost done with finals I had some time to go to Capanna gelato with my friend, Tarah, who is also really into desserts. She hadn't been there yet and it seemed like the perfect way to celebrate (almost) the end of the semester. This time I decided to get the Coconut flavor and a Cake Batter type flavor. It had some sort of interesting name, like Cake Mania Royale, or something, but I don't exactly remember, and I failed and didn't take a picture. Regardless, both flavors were good. The coconut was quite sweet and more cream tasting than other coconut frozen desserts I've had. There also seemed to be a hint of vanilla flavor in the coconut gelato. Lost of coconut flakes wer...

Once again, I'm totally behind. Madeline does such a good job at bringing you all the new flavors as they come out. But I'm always off in ice cream la la land (this time around ice cream la la land was reviewing the NOLA shipment) and it takes me a while to review new flavors. So for those of you that aren't already bored by Ben & Jerry's Cake My Day, read on. This limited batch flavor is described as Vanilla Cake Batter Ice Cream with Vanilla Cake Pieces, Buttercream Frosting & Raspberry Swirl, Now, like Madeline, I'm not the biggest fan of cake. Obviously my favorite dessert is ice cream, and after that it would have to be cookies, brownies, pie, cupcakes, then cake. Not that I would say no to a free piece of cake, but it is so easy for cake to be bad. Like bad cookies are still good, but bad cake is bad. However, lots of people were saying great things about this flavor, so I was stoked to try it. I'll start with the base. Vanilla c...

This semester is flying by at quite a terrifying rate. I can hardly believe it is already spring break, which has more to do with the fact I've done very little work on my final papers than anything else... However, I recently realized it was MARCH and I hadn't yet been to Heyn's this semester. But don't worry, I haven't fallen off the horse with respect to my goal to try every Heyn's flavor before I graduate. Last weekend, I got to check two more flavors off the list when I went to Heyn's with my friend, Tarah, a dessert lover who hadn't tried Heyn's yet! There were a lot of flavors I was thinking about, but Brownie Batter caught my eye, because it was advertised as a rotating special flavor. I'd better try it while I had the chance! Heyn's also has a cake batter flavor I've seen a few times and hadn't tried. I figured, go batter or go home. I was surprised that both of these flavors were plain base flavors. From what I...

Have you tried Cake My Day yet? No? SLAP. Go get some now.  Ben and Jerry's hit it out of the park with their latest limited batch flavor described as " Vanilla cake batter ice cream with vanilla cake pieces, buttercream frosting, and raspberry swirls." (Oxford comma added by me because I'm a believer, so just shut up, mom.) I've probably mentioned several times on this blog that cake is just not one of my favorite desserts.  It can be really, really good, but too frequently it is bland and dry and boring.  Luckily, that is not the cake this ice cream is modeled on.  Imagine the best vanilla cake you've ever had.  Moist and dense and maybe sliiiigggghhhhttttllly under-baked.  Thick buttercream frosting.  A sweet raspberry filling between layers.  That is the cake this ice cream is modeled on. The vanilla cake batter base is divine.  On the 'cake batter' to 'cake' scale, it was maybe a bit toward the 'cake' end (for comparison, m...

There are certain Ben and Jerry's flavors that I know exist but that I rarely or never see in stores; however, every time I go to Tim and Tom's Speedy Market they seem to have a single pint of one or two of these rare flavors.  On my most recent trip they had a pint of Cake Batter AND a pint of Cinnamon Buns.  I snagged the only pint of Cake Batter and thought really hard about grabbing Cinnamon Buns, but ultimately passed.  I'm still a little ashamed to walk out of a grocery store with 5 containers of ice cream and nothing else (but 4 is somehow ok, I don't even know). Cake Batter is Yellow cake batter ice cream with a chocolate frosting swirl. This ice cream tastes and smells exactly like yellow cake batter.  Upon opening the pint I was instantly hit with the wonderful aroma of eggy, buttery batter.  I am not a huge fan of yellow cake.  I mean, if someone hands me a piece I will eat it, but if I have a choice between yellow cake and a different...

Ice cream is best served in EXTRAVAGANZA form. And when you put me and Madeline in the same city for more than one day (which doesn't happen nearly enough and not just for ice cream reasons), there is bound to be an ice cream EXTRAVAGANZA!! This past weekend, Madeline came to visit me in Iowa City. I haven't lived here long, and I basically never go out, but I was at least more than capable of showcasing the best ice cream in Iowa City (and Iowa, in general).  Madeline was here for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday through mid afternoon, so there are obviously three parts to this mega-post. Part 1: Yotopia Okay, yes, we should have called this a frozen dairy dessert EXTRAVAGANZA, but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite like Iowa Ice Cream EXTRAVAGANZA! (Lets play a game. How many times can I write EXTRAVAGANZA IN ALL CAPS before I alienate all of our Dearest Readers??) (Madeline's note: at leas 10,000 times.) But Yotopia is such a central fixture to Iowa Ci...

Red velvet cake is definitely high on my list of favorite non ice cream desserts. I tried this flavor for the first time almost 4 years ago and didn't really like it. And I honestly don't think I have had it since then. But around Valentine's Day there were lots of new red velvet desserts that I saw in stores. There were red velvet Oreo's (which were AMAZING) and there were red velvet M&M's exclusive to Wal-Mart, which were also pretty good. This obviously meant I needed to do a red velvet Sundae Sunday, so this ice cream had to be my base. The only other red velvet ice cream I have seen is from Blue Bell and I couldn't find any, so Ben & Jerry's it was. Pretty in pink! Another knock on this ice cream before we even start. I hate discrepancies. On the website the description of this flavor is Red Velvet Cake Batter Ice Cream with Red Velvet Cake Pieces & a Cream Cheese Frosting Swirl . The description on the pint is Red Velvet Cake Ice ...

There's a shop on the Delmar Loop called St. Louis Bubble Tea that serves Bubble tea (obviously) and various Chinese dishes.  One of my favorite things to get there was a sweet bun filled with red bean paste.  They always had buns with various different fillings, and the red bean buns made an appearance only rarely, so it was really a treat when the stars aligned to deliver a delicious red bean bun into my hands. Red bean paste is made from boiling and mashing Azuki beans and then sweeting the results.  Yum! I had a dance performance this weekend and my wonderful parents drove the nine hours from St. Louis to see me!  The theater was a 10 minute walk from Izzy's so obviously we had to go get ice cream after the show.  I'm about to out my mom (sorry mom!), but she said this was the first time she'd had ice cream in years!  Years! Izzy's Red Bean ice cream is, unfortunately not a regular flavor.  There was nothing on the sign indicating this was ...

So this isn't ice cream, but Madeline talked about a froyo place in her introduction, so I'm just gonna say I think froyo is fair game. My St. Louis readers may remember the froyo place on Wydown called Chill. However, recently Chill closed down because the owners were moving to California. Now in its place is a new local chain called, Yo My Goodness. When I went the first time I had heard amazing things about their cake batter flavor. I'm not typically a fan of cake batter flavored ice creams and froyos, because in my opinion they often taste super artificial and not even really like cake batter. Despite my hesitations I tried the flavor. Oh. Em. Gee. This is good. The flavor is subtle and creamy and not artificial tasting at all. It tasted like licking the batter straight out of a mixing bowl. Seriously if a froyo could be life changing this would be it. My ice cream and other frozen dairy product consumption habits are a major part of my identity and before this I ...