The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

With the introduction of Ben and Jerry's Pint Slices and Blue Bunny's Bunny Snacks in the past few years, I'm not surprised that Haagen-Dazs decided to jump on the flat-ice-cream-snacks-that-aren't-bars trend. (Side note, I have no idea what to call this class of treat, maybe ice cream flats?)  Haagen-Dazs bars are consistently great, so I was hoping they would continue their tradition of superb treats. The Dulce de Leche Cookie Squares are a rich dark chocolate cookie topped with dulce de leche ice cream and swirls of luscious caramel coated in a milk chocolate shell with a drizzle of dark chocolate. My first thought upon opening the cookie squares was these these are gorgeous ! The chocolate shell is smooth and velvety with appealing swirl of dark chocolate set against the background of lighter chocolate. The taste and texture of the shell were also on pointe. It had a creamy milk-chocolate taste with a satisfying crackle and crunch without splintering and ma...

I want to jump right in to the description of Edy's Cake and Cookie Fantasy Frozen Yogurt: Red velvet and sugar cookie frozen yogurt swirled together with decadent cookie dough pieces and chocolate cookie crumbles. I mean, just, what is going on here? This sounds like a snack drunk, college Madeline would have concocted. I was pretty skeptical of the red velvet and sugar cookie combo. Red Velvet is a dark, rich, chocolate decadence, and sugar cookies are sweet and light. Together they tasted like those ridiculous delicious/disgusting grocery store frosted sugar cookies with icing attempting to be red velvet-flavored. Obviously, this flavor was over-the-top sugary, but I think it would have worked with a rich ice cream base instead of a yogurt base. Despite the sweetness, the tartness of the yogurt came through but didn't really blend  with the sugar. I kept getting random blasts of tartness through the sugary background. The sugar cookie mix-ins tasted like ...

Coffee and chocolate is such an obvious combination, but I don't think it's often done well in ice cream form. It's hard to strike the perfect balance between the darkness or lightness of the coffee and the darkness or lightness and texture of the chocolate. Haagen-Dazs takes a new approach to this combo, and I think I like it.  Haagen Dazs describes Espresso Chocolate Cookie as The smooth sophistication of coffee ice cream swirled with cookie crumbles and sprinkled with chocolate espresso flakes; let its bold flavors invigorate your senses. Somewhat serendipitously, I recently reviewed Haagen-Dazs Coffee , so I can compare that to Espresso Cookie Crumble. While Coffee was a lighter roast with plenty of cream and sugar, Espresso Chocolate Chip was a fuller-bodied, darker roast with just a hint of cream and sugar. The chocolate cookie crumbles reminded me of the chocolate cookie butter in Ben and Jerry's Boom Chocolatta. They had a similar thick and grainy ...

It's time to take a step back from all of the *new*new*new* I've been posting lately and review the classic Ben and Jerry's flavor Mint Chocolate Cookie.  Don't worry though, I have reviews of the June Blizzard of the Month and a couple new (but now several months old) Talenti flavors. Mint Chocolate Cookie is Peppermint ice cream with chocolate sandwich cookies. When I found Empower Mint, my grocery store was having a sale on Ben and Jerry's pints, so I wanted to pick up another flavor, and thought it would be nice to pick up another mint flavor to compare.  Chocolate Peppermint Crunch is well known as an AMAZING flavor, so I decided to go with a less popular mint option to see how it stacked up. Mint Chocolate crunch, like Empower Mint, uses a peppermint base; however it is quite tasty here where as in Empower Mint the peppermint was overwhelming.  Unfortunately, aside from the base, there just wasn't much going on. The chocolate sandwich coo...

The first time I shopped at the HyVee by my house I was pretty underwhelmed by the ice cream selection. There were enough of the big national brands and Whitey's which is an Iowa brand, but nothing else. Sad day. However, the second or third time I was there, I noticed there was one freezer of ice cream separate from the rest of the ice cream. This contain the teeny Ben & Jerry's and Haagen-Dazs containers and other single serving ice cream treats. This included individually wrapped Thelma's ice cream sandwiches. Thelma's Treats started out as a cookie delivery business back in 2012 in Des Moines by a guy names Derek Lewis. Derek's grandmother was, as you may suspect, named Thelma, and she made delicious cookies. In 2013, Thelma, the woman herself, passed away at age 108! Pretty impressive, Thelma. Also in 2013, Thelma's started making ice cream sandwiches, which were delivered to Des Moines area HyVees. They've been pretty popular, so now you can ...

Talenti put out 7 new flavors for 2015, and I managed to find three of them on my last trip to the grocery store.  Kyle thought it would be ridiculous to buy all three at once, and he thought I should pick only 2, but I snuck the third flavor into the cart. I couldn't decide which flavor I was most excited to try, so I let the good people of Facebook decide, and they chose Oatmeal Raisin Cookie. I sadly never got the chance to try the much missed Ben and Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk, so unfortunately I will be unable to compare the Talenti for those of you who miss OCC, but I'll try to do a good enough job describing the Talenti to hopefully give you an idea of how they compare. The first flavor I notice biting into this ice cream is cinnamon and ....... something else that I can't put my finger on.  Was it nutmeg?  Clove?  Some other weird spice?  I finally read the ingredient list, and I think the mystery flavor was molasses.  I have person...

As you know, not too long ago, I made the trek from Eldon to the Lake HyVee to get some 2nd Street Creamery ice cream which I reviewed here . I also wanted to get some Talenti which isn't sold at any Eldon grocery store. I came to the sad realization that I haven't reviewed any Talenti. That obviously needed to change quickly. I wanted to grab something Madeline hadn't reviewed, since overall there hasn't been that much Talenti reviewed on this blog in general compared to how many flavors they have, which is 30!! Although HyVee generally has a great ice cream selection, they only had 4 Talenti flavors: pistachio, which Madeline had just reviewed, one of their sorbets, and I was looking to review a gelato, their vanilla, which I just wanted something more exciting, and the Caramel Cookie Crunch. In the store, I couldn't remember if Madeline had reviewed this flavor, and I didn't think she had. But when I got home and checked I was a little disappointed to see she...

It seems like forever since I've reviewed a Talenti flavor!  Today I'll be reviewing the Caramel Cookie Crunch flavor.  This described as Crunchy chocolate cookies are combined with Talenti's Dulce de Leche and blended in just as the gelato is being hand filled into the jars, transforming standard cookies and cream into a luxurious treat. First let me say that I enjoyed this flavor, so much so that I polished off the pint in about 3 minutes flat. (Yes! There is at least one thing in life that I'm good at!) On your marks!  Get set!  Go! The Dulce de Leche swirls were not very prominent.  There was a subtle caramel flavor suffused throughout the entire pint, but the swirls themselves were very thin and very similar in flavor to the base gelato.  The cookie chunks were small and beadlike, sometimes with 3 or 4 of these little beads clumped together.  In size and variation they reminded me of a box of Nerds candy.  They were crunchy and ta...