The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Dearest Readers, I'm sure you all were incredibly devastated the last few weeks when Madeline and I weren't posting much because you wanted to know about all of the winter season flavors. Delightful peppermints, scrumptious holiday cookies, lovely hot cocoa flavors. Unfortunately, it was not only finals that kept you from reading about winter flavors. My HyVee hardly had any winter flavors stocked! Grants I'm sure I could have simply driven across town to one of the other HyVees and found plenty of winter goodness, but I'm lazy. However, there was one local Iowa winter treat on the shelves of my grocery store, the Whitey's Mint Chipper ice cream sandwich. This treat is described as A delicious blend of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream between two homemade chocolate cookies! Starting out, the mint chocolate chip ice cream was pretty standard. It was strongly mint flavor, but distinctly mint extract, not leaf. However, I wasn't expecting anything differen...

Not long ago I tried a flavor from the new-ish HyVee line, Til the Cows Come Home, and wasn't super impressed. But I've heard such good things about the line in general, I decided to try another flavor. At my local HyVee the other day I was browsing the flavors and my jaw almost dropped to the floor when a saw the description for the flavor, Who Stole the Cookies From the Cookie Jar: Cookies & cream ice cream with fudge and whipped cream flavored revels . Shut the front door HyVee, who even knew you could make cookies and cream more exciting?  And without just making it a different flavor than cookies and cream (I'm thinking B&J Milk and Cookies as an example. Not that Milk and Cookies is bad, but it's just not a cookies and cream flavor). I guess Til The Cows Come Home figured out how to do just that. Side note: why is the name of this brand so long and why are all the names of their flavors so long? Side note 2: why are some ice cream companies usi...

Finally we have the last of the new Ben & Jerry's Core flavors for you, and it's a joint review!  This flavor is Chocolate and Cheesecake ice creams with chocolate cookies and a cheesecake core. Madeline's take: I don't know, guys. I think Ben & Jerry's tried really hard to top last year's cookie cores, and didn't even come close.  In concept the flavors sound amazing, but the execution was lacking.  I've read other reviews of this flavor and the main criticism is that it's not cheesy enough, and I have to say I agree but that I'm not surprised either.  Ben & Jerry's does not have a strong cheesecake game. The chocolate ice cream was their standard chocolate base; not much needs to be said there.  The cheesecake ice cream was not cheesy enough.  It tasted more like sweet cream ice cream with a bit of added cream cheese. I couldn't really taste the chocolate cookies against the chocolate or the cheesecake base, a...

Alright, it is time to point some fingers. First, at Madeline: you need to review more Three Twins, like seriously, you've only reviewed two of their flavors. Second, at me: I need to review more Three Twins, this will be only my fifth review of a Three Twins flavor. Third, at Three Twins/my local grocery stores, more Three Twins need to be stocked where I can buy them! I was looking at the Three Twins website and there are so many delicious sounding flavors I haven't seen before, like Mocha Difference, Dad's Cardamom, Chocolate Malt, Banana Nut Confetti, Brownie Batter Chunk, Land of Milk and Honey, Caramel Truffle Swirl, and I could go on. However, you've got to do the best you can with what you've got, and for the time being I've got Three Twin's Cookies & Cream. This flavor is described as Scrumptious cookies in a madagascar vanilla base. As I mentioned when I reviewed Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream a while back, I love to see a more...

Now Dearest Readers, you know I've been in the ice cream game long enough that little surprises me. Especially when it comes to the big players like Ben & Jerry's, Haagen-Dazs, and Talenti. I hear about when they are coming out with a new flavor or taking away a flavor long before the general public. And I am incredibly familiar with their line ups. Or so I thought. Right before winter break, I was out running other errands and I happened to be closer to the larger HyVee in Iowa City, so I decided to do my grocery shopping there. This HyVee doesn't have any brands my HyVee doesn't have, but they do have a wider and more interesting selection of flavors. If you recall, I purchased Haagen-Dazs' Green Tea flavor from this HyVee. Well, when I was perusing the ice cream section back in December, the Haagen-Dazs Cookies and Cream flavor caught my eye. Now, Cookies and Cream isn't a fascinating flavor in and of itself, but I had no idea HD had a version of th...

When Madeline came to visit Iowa City back in October, the number of flavors of Thelma's Treats ice cream sandwiches at my HyVee had diminished from five to two. I was quite scared eventually they would disappear altogether. However, my fears have been proven to be for naught. Recently two seasonal flavors of Thelma's were added to the shelves! There is this Double Chocolate Peppermint flavor and an eggnog flavor. I'm not an eggnog fan to begin with, and I've had quite the traumatic experience with eggnog. So, I'm not sure if I can bring myself to try the eggnog flavor, but we'll see. The sandwich is eggnog ice cream between snickerdoodle cookies. Possibly, if you, Dearest Readers, ask pretty please with enough sugar on top, I would try them. So this treat is peppermint ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate chocolate chip cookies. Once again, Thelma's has delivered a great ice cream sandwich. The peppermint ice cream was out of this world. It wa...

When yogurt became a trendy food, frozen yogurt quickly followed. And again, when, more recently, Greek yogurt became a trendy food, Greek frozen yogurt has quickly followed. Both of these types of products are supposed to be healthier alternatives to ice cream. Which I think is inherently silly. When I am eating ice cream, I am trying  to eat as unhealthily as possible. But whatever. There are sort of two types of players in this Greek and regular frozen yogurt game. Ice cream companies turning their ice cream products into yogurt (or coming up with new flavors of yogurt) and yogurt companies moving into making a frozen dessert. However, I definitely believe frozen yogurt is closer to a frozen dessert than it is to yogurt, so I am inclined to think an ice cream company would make a better frozen yogurt than a yogurt company. However, I'm now realizing the only frozen yogurts I've reviewed are from frozen yogurt shops (which is something altogether completely different) a...

After thoroughly enjoying Edy's Salted Caramel Pretzel Frozen Custard, I thought I would give this relatively new line a third shot. So far I have had one bad experience, with the Chocolate Malt flavor, and one good one. This flavor can serve as the tie breaker! I want to start by telling you there is no description of this flavor anywhere on the container. However, on the Edy's website, the description reads A rich and creamy blend of sweet cream frozen custard with plenty of chocolate cookie pieces and peanut butter swirls in every bite . When I first ate this flavor, I assumed the base was vanilla. It is odd that vanilla is considered our default neutral base, when vanilla is a flavored ice cream, as opposed to sweet cream. As I was eating this flavor, there was something different about it compared to what I was expecting it to taste like. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. When I looked on the Edy's website for the description, and found thi...