The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Every time I go to Target, I see these bars and think about getting them. I'm very drawn to them because they have incredibly attractive packaging. I usually don't purchase these types of things, frozen dairy desserts trying to be "healthy," but when I noticed the cookie dough flavor, I had to throw some in my cart because I am a lover of all things cookie dough. And a new year means time to try some different things! The description of these treats reads, Vanilla frozen greek yogurt bars with chocolate-flavored chips & pieces of cookie dough . The first thing I will say about these bars is man oh man is this company targeting a certain demographic, women between 25-40 I would guess. And oh gosh I'm almost in that demographic. Where the bar pictured below reads, "they say love is blind, but it must have taste buds" some of the bars in the package read, "no regrets, unlike that haircut in college." Ahhh! Second, these bars are ...

I'm gonna go ahead and say it, St. Louis is the frozen custard capital of the world. Get at me Wisconsin.  The last evening I was in St. Louis, my parents and I decided to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Ranoush in Kirkwood because we're unoriginal and we always go to Ranoush and Ranoush is tasty. However, the Ranoush in Kirkwood CLOSED!! We were sad, but granted it could have been closed for a long time. We Fentonites don't make our way over to Kirkwood too often because we know all the Kirkwoodians are looking down their noses at us.  Anyways, we decided instead to go to Crushed Red. And because I had a healthy salad for dinner obviously that needed to be counteracted. So we stopped at the Andy's in Kirkwood before heading home. I decided on the Triple Chocolate Concrete because CHOCOLATE. Also can I just say that Andy's is actually the OG of the core trend? Their Jackhammers are basically make your own core sundaes, and they've had th...

This week I finally got my hands on two elusive Talenti flavors introduced in 2015, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Raspberry Cheescake.  I have a review of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough first, and a review of Raspberry Cheesecake is up next. Do you remember how, when you were a child and you did something stupid, your parents would say, "We're not angry, just disappointed."   Soul crushing.  I don't think there is a word in the English language more fraught with emotion than disappointed  when used in this context.  I want you to summon all of those childhood memories; really get in tune with how it felt to disappoint  your parents when I tell you, dearest reader, that I didn't dislike Talenti's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, I was just disappointed in it. *Gasp*  CCCD is described as A flavor loved by kids and adults who are secretly still kids, our upgrade of a beloved classic blends bits of real chocolate chip cookie dough and swirls of dark butte...

I feel like I go through cycles with Dairy Queen.  I'll go for months without having any, and then suddenly get it a lot until I get sick of it again.  I'm currently entering the ice-cream eating phase of the DQ cycle, so expect a few more Blizzard reviews!  Most recently I tried the Fanniversary Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Smash Blizzard.  This is Peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookie dough, peanut butter, and choco chunks blended with creamy vanilla soft serve. Ok, there was so much going on here.  I didn't read the description until after I finished the Blizzard, so the whole time I was eating I was trying to guess what all of the mix-ins were.  I got everything except the chocolate chip cookie dough, I thought it was peanut butter cookie dough. The most interesting part of this Blizzard was the textural contrast between the peanut butter cookie and the chocolate chip cookie dough.  The peanut butter cookies were about the size of m...

The last few Culinary Circle flavors I tried were stellar, so I was excited to try their take on cookie dough ice cream.  This flavor is Vanilla ice cream with cookie dough pieces and chocolaty chunks. This flavor was ok, but not phenomenal.  I should have expected this because the flavor has a vanilla base.  There are very few vanilla bases out there that are truly amazing.  The first thing I experienced here was the distinct, brash and harsh flavor of vanilla extract.  Womp womp.  The ice cream also had an unnaturally bleached white color. The chocolate chunks were neither here nor there; passable, but standard.  They were small, crunchy and frequent enough to get some in each bite. The real standout was the cookie dough.  This was on par with some of the best cookie dough mix-ins I've ever had.  The chunks were monstrous: spherical with diameter about the diameter of a quarter.  They were quite soft and chewy and gooey, b...

This past weekend, while Brett was visiting, we visited our friends who now live in Madison, Wisconsin. Wisconsin is known as "America's Dairyland" so I was pretty pumped to get some ice cream while visiting. On Sunday, we walked around the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus and discovered an ice cream shop, Babcock Ice Cream. Babcock Dairy is the University's dairy plant and they make ice cream, milk, cheese, and tea. I don't know what tea has to do with anything, but there ya go. Perks of going to a big public university in Wisconsin? There is a sweet ice cream shop with a ton of flavors right on campus. I guess I made the wrong choice going to Wash U. There were lots of flavors offered which sounded tasty to me, but I decided on Pineapple Cake, to try something unlike anything I have reviewed before, and Cookie Dough to go for something classic. The Pineapple Cake flavor is described as Pineapple pieces swirled with white cake batter and vanilla ice...

I picked up some Graeter's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough at Tim and Tom's because I thought, "What could go wrong here?"  Unfortunately, this wasn't the greatest ice cream ever.  Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible or inedible, but it should have been so much better. When I opened the pint, I was extremely excited.  It seemed like there were more chunks than there was base.  I thought this boded well for the rest of the experience, but I was mistaken.  The base was vanilla flavored I think.  I couldn't really figure it out.  It was pretty bland, and there were so many chunks it was hard to get a scoop of base by itself. The cookie dough chunks themselves were pretty excellent.  They were gritty with that sugary grittiness of real cookie dough.  They were about the size of a dime and delightfully gooey.  Unfortunately the cookie dough chunks could not hold their own against Graeter's signature chocolate chips. The chocolat...

This reader request is a long time coming. A while ago a friend of mine from high school suggested I review Blue Bell's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. With all of the new flavors being released by companies since the start of 2015 has caused me to get behind on other flavors. But here it is. On Monday, I was still in major calorie debt from running the Go! St. Louis Marathon the day before, so I knew I needed to sit down and eat at least half a pint of high butterfat ice cream. What would be a better choice than Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough? After Madeline did her Blood Orange Throw Down I thought I would copy the idea! Double the ice cream reviewing means double the fun!! And double the exclamation points!!!!   Before we start: Ben & Jerry's introduced the flavor Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough to the world in 1984. Yes they were THE first to put cookie dough in ice cream. Thank goodness they did this because if they had not I would have significantly...

I love Jimmy Fallon. I love ice cream. I love Ben & Jerry's. I was so stoked when I saw the release of this flavor. I got it this past weekend in St. Louis and was so excited to try it. Proof that sometimes I eat food other than ice cream. And healthy  food, at that! The description of this flavor is Caramel & Chocolate Ice Creams with Chocolate Cookie Swirls & Gobs of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Peanut Butter Cookie Dough . There is obviously A LOT going on here with this ice cream. I'll take it piece by piece. The flavor of the caramel ice cream was really mellow. If you set out to get a bite of just the caramel ice cream you could taste the flavor, but for the most part it was drowned out by the chocolate ice cream. Next the chocolate cookie swirl. I was expecting this component to be like the chocolate cookie swirl found in Chocolate Therapy. Instead, it reminded me of the chocolate cookie core in Boom Chocolatta. It had that crunchy, a...

The frozen yogurt bar, Tutti Frutti opened a University City location back in the summer of 2012. After not being super impressed my first visit that summer, I was convinced to go back when I was told they had amazing vegan flavors made with soy. Their soy peanut butter, taro root, and banana milk have been favorites of mine ever since. Look at the adorable designs on the Tutti Frutti cups!! But the University City location, on North & South and Delmar, isn't actually close to where I used to live in University City, so I didn't go a ton, and I hadn't had a chance to go since moving out of St. Louis. Even though frozen yogurt bars aren't the most exciting, I had really been craving some vegan peanut butter froyo, so after my birthday dinner (at the all vegan brick and mortar location of Lulu's Local Eatery) last weekend we all headed to Tutti Frutti for some froyo. A list of things to help you convince yourself that froyo is good for you. A while...

After trying the Limited Edition Peanut Butter Half Baked (reviewed  here ), and talking about how Ben and Jerry's was the first brand to ever put cookie dough into ice cream I decided it would be in my best interest to review some cookie dough ice cream.  What better place to start than with the originators themselves? I picked up a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream at the grocery store this weekend.  This flavor is described as Vanilla ice cream with gobs of chocolate chip cookie dough. The first thing that I noticed was the vanilla flavor.  There are some grumps out there who are not that fond of Ben and Jerry's vanilla base, especially in comparison to their Vanilla Bean base used in the now-discontinued (aside, I'm very sad this flavor no longer exists) Late Night Snack.  I guess I shouldn't really call them grumps because I have the same quibbles about their chocolate vs. milk chocolate bases.  Anyway, the point ...

I hadn't heard of 2nd Street Creamery until back in September when Madeline reviewed 2nd Street Creamery's Black Hill Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. Madeline absolutely loved the flavor, but that didn't get me too excited about the brand. In general, Madeline is a bigger fan of pie than I am. Not that I don't love pie, but I would probably rather have cookies than pie. Or cookie dough. -not very subtle foreshadowing- Not too long after Madeline posted that review, I had headed down to Lake of the Ozarks to go to HyVee to get some of Ben & Jerry's Candy Bar Pie. While I was there I saw that HyVee carried 2nd Street Creamery. I was like "Oh cool! Let me look at what flavors they have!!" My eye was instantly drawn to the Can't Tell Me No! Cookie Dough. Just from the name of the flavor I knew this was gonna be good. The title of this flavor basically sounded like it was describing my life philosophy. Am I worried about raw egg? NO!! Do I care if I end up w...