The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

Okay, so when I was in the St. Louis airport eating Baskin Robbins, I was flying to Boston en-route to my next research location. When I arrived in Boston, my friend Brett immediately asked me if I wanted to get ice cream. I surprised him when I said no, because I'd eaten some in the airport. His response of, "WHO EVEN ARE YOU?" was of course, appropriate. When he continued on to tell me that FoMu, a Boston vegan ice cream company had a pop-up shop only a few blocks from his apartment, I changed my mind. Not that it was that difficult. I'd heard of FoMu before, but this was my first time trying their ice cream, because they are still only sold around Massachusetts and Rhode Island. FoMu makes their vegan ice creams with coconut milk and they also make vegan baked goods. The flavor offerings at the pop-up shop were a combination of totally desserty flavors and super unique creations. I decided to get one of each, Avocado and Peanut Butter Mud Pie. I don't...

I've got another new Talenti flavor to review! Hooray! Key Lime Pie Talenti is a tangy, creamy key lime gelato with graham cracker swirls and pieces throughout.  A dessert within a dessert is a beautiful thing, but a dessert inside a Talenti? Now that's next level. In preparation for this post I was on Talenti's website looking for the description of their new Key Lime Pie flavor.  While there I noticed the interesting phenomenon that this flavor had lots of 5 star ratings and lots of 1 & 2 star ratings, so I delved in to the reviews to see why.  To summarize, the 5 star reviews said, "This was a great flavor!" And I agree.  The 1 and 2 star reviews said, "This was NOT a key lime flavor!" And I also agree. I'll address the negative reviews first.  This flavor was not very limey.  In fact, limes were not listed as an ingredient.  They do list 'natural flavors,' but do not explicitly list limes.  I can understand why die-hard ...

I'm going to give you a little insight into the life of a graduate student. At 8:30 this past Sunday, my brain was pretty fried from doing work and I was caught up on reviews (for the most part). Basically I had nothing to do. I thought about just going to bed right then and there, but then I remembered I'm 24 years old, not 74. So instead I decided to go to Heyn's by myself, because YOLO. I live a wild life. Heyn's is a pretty small shop and all the seats were full, so I sat outside in the cool weather to eat my ice cream, that's how dedicated I am. I thought the lighting would be bad for pictures, but they turned out great! Well Heyn's was pretty popping, I guess I'm not the only Iowa City resident who decided to go crazy and get some delicious ice cream on a Sunday night. After sampling a couple of flavors I picked Key Lime Pie Cheesecake, which I had never seen offered before, and Chocoholic Delight. The Chocoholic Delight is described as Chocola...

I've reviewed Yogurt Lab flavors before, but it's high time I reviewed the chain using Lizzy's patented 8-step fro-yo review process. If you don't live in Minneapolis or haven't read my previous reviews of this fro-yo chain, Yogurt Lab is a chain of science-themed frozen yogurt shops in Minneapolis.  They list their flavors periodic table-style.  It's super cute! I'll just dive right in with the 8 questions we at the Big Muddy use to assess a frozen yogurt shop. 1) The variety of flavors: is there a good selection? Yogurt Lab has a ton of flavors  in rotation.  There were 8 to 10 flavors at the downtown location today, and there were a good mix of fruity, chocolatey, and 'other' (think caramel, cookies and cream, etc ...) flavors.  A little something for everyone. 2) The flavor of my choices. Today I chose lime frozen yogurt.  I had grand visions of making a lime pie themed dessert, but you'll see later why that kind of failed.  Thi...

Alas!! I have done it!!! I have complete the epic, months-long quest to try all of the Haagen-Dazs Artisan Collection! After a treacherous trek across town to the HyVee on the other side of town, losing hope while wandering the maze-like, only slightly-different layout of this grocery store, I finally found it. The Banana Rum Jam flavor, the only remaining missing link. The completion of this quest will bring eternal fame and glory to the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog!! And what I mean by eternal fame and glory is being able to say we are not the actual worst ice cream bloggers out there. Most other ice cream blogs had tried all of the artisan collection flavors months and months ago. You know, like, when they were still new. However, Madeline can't find the Applewood Smoked Caramel Almond flavor (which I did when I first moved to Iowa City) and I couldn't find the Banana Rum Jam (which Madeline did back in May).  And what I mean by couldn't find, is hadn't look exte...

I only have one more flavor in the Artisan Collection to try! The latest flavor I tried is Banana Rum Jam a collaboration with  The Jam Stand  a Brooklyn-based jam company.  Haagen-Dazs describes this ice cream as Inspired by Drunken Monkey jam from The Jam Stand in Brooklyn, this uniquely flavored recipe combines a banana, rum and lime swirl into smooth vanilla bean ice cream. After reading the description of this ice cream and the description of the inspiration jam, this became one of the flavors from the Artisan Collection I was most excited about.  Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to my expectations.  It wasn't a bad ice cream by any means, my expectations were just very different from reality. First the great parts of this ice cream. I love the way Haagen-Dazs executed the banana flavor in this ice cream.  Most often, when ice cream companies do a banana flavor they go for a straight banana base which can be overwhelming.  Instead,...

This was another of the three pints I picked up a couple weeks ago from the Seward Coop.  I picked this one up because Cantaloupe Lime is not a very common flavor.  Also lime sorbet is one of the most awesome flavors of sorbet. Sonny's Ice Cream (and sorbet!) is made here in Minneapolis at  Crema Cafe .  Supposedly their ice cream is pretty good.  I'll have to make it a point to go check it out one day. This sorbet was a bit disappointing.  If you are calling something cantaloupe lime the predominant flavor should be cantaloupe.  Unfortunately the cantaloupe flavor took a major back seat to the lime in this pint.  This didn't make it taste bad; as I said, lime sorbet is awesome, it's just not what I was expecting.  The cantaloupe served to mellow out the lime flavor making it not too acidic or harsh.  Maybe if it had been called lime (cantaloupe) sorbet I would have been happier. The color was quite pleasing.  It was ...

Kyle and I went to the Minnesota state fair on the Sunday before Labor Day.  Guys, the Minnesota State Fair is, like, a Big Fucking Deal. Since it was Labor Day Weekend and the last few days of the fair there were so, so many people there, and nobody was following any discernible traffic patterns.  Everybody just walking wherever whenever.  It  was a little hard to maneuver around and was honestly a little bit stressful. Eet ees huuuuge! The first thing Kyle and I decided to try was a funnel cake ice cream sundae.  We chose the strawberry cheesecake flavor which had vanilla soft serve on top of a funnel cake topped with strawberry syrup, cream cheese icing and whipped cream.  There was nothing highbrow or pretentious about this dish, it was just a lot of fried, sugary, delicious calories packed onto one plate.  They gave you a spoon to eat this with, but we would have been better served with a knife and fork because of the gooeyn...

My friend Lucy, who is from the Seattle area requested that I review the Mallard Ice Cream Shop while I was visiting family in Bellingham. But this reader request started well before Lucy asked me to stop by. I have been hearing about this ice cream shop for a long, long time. I've been hearing about it from My Aunt Muriel (Ducky), my Uncle Kelly (Drake), and cousin Shea (Duckling? Though at 15 years old and 5 foot 11, he's not so ling-y any more). And, yes, the duck themed nicknames came way before their passion for this duck themed ice cream shop and the two are, in all seriousness, a lovely situation. But seeing as this is a blog mostly about ice cream, and only a little bit about my life (thought you probably hear about my life more than you would like), I won't have time for the explanation of the duck themed nicknames. And I have quite a lot of ice cream to write about in this post. First a little about Mallard's. Located in Belligham, Washington, which by my ob...

Oh what can I say about Cherokee street, a street where hipster culture and hispanic culture mash lovingly into one another with taquerias next to discount furniture stores next to an employee-owned anarchist bakery.  That's just St. Louis for you.  The street's vibe is more down and dirty than the curated hipster experience shown whenever NBC Nightly News showcases the latest artisanal mayonnaise craze exploding out of Brooklyn. I Scream Cakes is definitely on the hipster end of this spectrum.  They make custom cakes as well as functioning as an ice cream scoop shop.  The first thing I noticed when I entered the shop was that these ice cream makers were not kidding around with their flavors.  I think mint-chocolate chip and vanilla bean were the only 'ordinary' flavors on offer that day.  You can see why I put ordinary in quotation marks by reading Lizzy's review of mint chocolate chip ice cream  here. When Lizzy and I walked in the woman worki...