The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

It one kind of fun to write reviews of products you really enjoy and an entirely different kind of fun to pan terrible products, but it is exactly zero kinds of fun to write a review of a product you didn't particularly like made by a brand you adore. I'M SORRY BB. Thelma's Treats has a new ice cream sandwich with one chocolate chip cookie, one double chocolate chip cookie and some strange marshmallow/graham ice cream. Thelma's was originally a cookie company, and their ice cream sandwiches use their cookies and Anderson Erickson ice cream. I thought the double dark chocolate cookie would outshine the regular chocolate chip cookie, but the combo actually worked quite well. The double chocolate cookie give this treat a ridiculous richness which was balanced by the lighter buttery/caramelized flavor of the the regular chocolate chip cookie. I cannot fault Thelma's at all for cookie execution. Unfortunately, the ice cream failed to live up to the cookies. Li...

Reason number five hundred and eleventy trillion why I hate grad school: the end of the semester was predictably hectic, but now the semester is over and I'm BUSIER. THAN. EVER. I have a summer internship starting June 4, and my advisor and I are trying to finish a paper before then, so I've been swamped with work. I definitely blame it on grad school sucking and not on lack-luster time management skills. I finished my pint of Ben and Jerry's Gimme S'more! over a month ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing a review due to the aforementioned busyness that is in no way, shape, or form of my own making. Gimme S'more! has toasted marshmallow ice cream with chocolate cookie swirls, graham cracker swirls, and fudge flakes. Did I enjoy this ice cream? Yes. Was it what it professed to be? No. Did it remind me of a S'more? No. The toasted marshmallow base did not read as toasted marshmallow to me. I didn't get the soft hints of vanilla you typ...

I've been putting off writing a review of Klondike S'mores bars for a few days. These are creamy marshmallow ice cream with sweet graham cracker swirls inside a delightfully breakable milk chocolate flavored shell. The marshmallow ice cream has a very strong and distinctive flavor, and I keep flip-flopping about whether or not I liked the flavor and whether or not these bars are truly s'mores flavored. After a long period of contemplation, I think I didn't really enjoy the marshmallow ice cream and they are not truly s'mores flavored. Calling all my ladies who were tweens in the '00s - the marshmallow ice cream tasted like I imagine a Lip Smackers S'mores chapstick turned into ice cream would taste. A very fake, sweet, and bold marshmallow flavor. Also - I think it's high time we make Lip Smackers retro-cool. The graham cracker swirl toned down the intense base a bit, but I don't think it was a strong enough flavor to really qualify these...

So far, I've been relatively impressed with the HyVee line Til the Cows Come Home. I've tried two of their flavors, a chocolate peanut butter one that was okay, and a cookies and cream one which I really enjoyed. I was excited to try their s'mores flavor, even though the long names of the ice cream flavors kind of bother me. Like yes, it's a cute pun, but it doesn't roll off the tongue nicely. This flavor is described as  Artificially flavored graham cracker ice cream with marshmallow swirls, graham crunch, and chocolate flavored chunks.  I love that Iowans love graham cracker ice cream. Whitey's does some great flavors with a graham cracker base, and the graham cracker base is what drew me to this flavor. There's also some graham crunch? Yum! The base of this flavor was worth the excitement. It was a pretty light and sweet graham cracker flavor, which served as a nice backdrop for the other elements. The graham crunch was basically sugary, grainy, ...

It has been wayyyy toooo long since I've had a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Madeline was doing a great job trying the new Blizzards and Blizzards of the month, so I've kind of slacked on DQ. The other day, however, while driving to a friend's house and passing a Dairy Queen, I, all of a sudden, NEEEEDED a Blizzard. Like I was going to die if I didn't get one. I was super starving and the bright lights of the Dairy Queen sign were calling to me through the darkness of the Iowa winter. Dairy Queen brought back the S'mores Blizzard back in spring of last year when they also introduced the Oreo S'mores Blizzard. I didn't either were being served anymore, but at the teeny tiny DQ in Coralville, IA you can still get them. I went for the regular S'mores Blizzard. This is a regular size. Sometimes (aka when I'm hungry) I do truly love the American fast food sizing systems! This treat had chunks of graham cracker, chocolate flakes, and a marshmallow swirl ...

Seems like I'm on a kick of older Ben and Jerry's flavors lately.  As with Boston Cream Pie, which I recently reviewed  here , I have had Ben and Jerry's S'mores but never reviewed it.  This ice cream is described as Chocolate ice cream with fudge chunks, toasted marshmallow, and graham cracker swirls. Honestly, for 95% of the pint, if you would have told me this was a chocolate ice cream with fudge flakes and nothing else I would have believed you.  Then graham swirls just didn't stand out against the base, and there wasn't much of the marshmallow swirl. The base itself was fantastic.  It seemed a bit darker and richer than the chocolate base in some other Ben and Jerry's flavors.  The fudge flakes added a slightly more bitter element to the overall chocolate flavor profile. The marshmallow swirl was amazing, there just wasn't very much of it.  I think I got three mouthfuls in the half pint I ate. (I had to share this flavor with Kyle....

When Dairy Queen announced S'mores and Oreo S'mores as the Blizzards of the Month for April, I was excited and confused.  Excited because a S'mores Blizzard sounds awesome and an Oreo S'mores Blizzard sounds even more awesome, but confused because I definitely think of S'mores as a summer  camping treat.  I guess I can't really think of any 'typically April' flavors that would have been better fitted to this month. I tried the classic S'mores Blizzard first.  This is described as It's back! The S'mores Blizzard treat with mini marshmallow filled chocolate bars, graham cracker pieces, toasted graham and marshmallow topping, and creamy vanilla soft serve. After the disastrous March Blizzard of the month ( Grasshopper Mousse Pie ), Dairy Queen is back in top form with the S'mores Blizzard.  The toasted graham and marshmallow topping infused the vanilla soft serve base, giving it the flavor of the gooey innards of a perfectly toa...

I bet you ten dollars that you've never heard of Belmont ice cream before.  So, what is it? Belmont is the in-house ice cream brand of ALDI grocery stores, and sells for something like $3 for 1.5 qts.  I guess I would describe ALDI as a discount grocery store, but discount isn't really the right word.  It's owned by the same company that owns Trader Joe's and keeps prices down by, among other things, selling mostly in-store brands and stocking a limited number of items.  I feel like calling it a 'discount' grocery store is selling it a bit short, but this is an ice cream review blog not a grocery store review blog. First things first, this is cheap ice cream.  This raises the philosophical issue of how to review cheap ice cream.  We mostly review ice cream and frozen desserts that are on the ~fancier~ side.  Discount ice cream is certainly not that.  So, do you review it objectively, or do you only compare it to other discount ice creams? What...

Wow the peppermint overload continues. Recently I've reviewed a lot of peppermint treats, from Yotopia, Thelma's Treats, Ben & Jerry's, and now from Heyn's. I might not have even called it an overload before, but now the peppermint train has left the station and I'm the conductor. This past weekend I ate at Heyn's with my roommate, Aileen, and her boyfriend. The next day I left Iowa and I will be gone for 4 whole weeks, which means 4 weeks with NO Heyn's. Sad day. I picked the Peppermint Candy because it is a seasonal flavor and S'mores because I noticed the mini marshmallows in the flavor and they looked delicious. I was also super excited about this peppermint flavor because it is more along the lines of old fashioned peppermint ice cream. The other peppermint treats I've tried have had a strong peppermint flavor like what you would find in a York Peppermint Patty. This peppermint flavor was more like, well, exactly what the name ...

A while ago, Madeline asked me if I had ever heard of Whitey's and if I'd tried their Sgt. Camo flavor. This was before I'd tried Whitey's Graham Central Station, so the only time I'd tried Whitey's was when I visited the University of Iowa back in the Spring. Apparently one of Madeline's friends loves Whitey's. Madeline described the Sgt. Camo flavor to me and I thought, "oh cool, a s'mores flavor" but wasn't too excited. I guess, at the time, what the flavor actually was  didn't register with me. The flavor is described as Graham cracker and marshmallow ice creams with a ribbon of Whitey's famous fudge.  Hold it right there, folks. An ice cream with graham cracker AND marshmallow ice creams? What the WHAT?! After trying the Graham Central Station flavor and loving it, I remember the conversation I'd had with Madeline, looking up the description of Sgt. Camo and was so stoked to try it. One more quick no...

Today, I took Brett back to the airport after a week long visit from him. Visits from Brett mean two things. Lots of ice cream eating and not a lot of blog post writing. Our first ice cream adventure was actually a froyo adventure. It was his first day in Iowa, we had both worked out earlier in the day and we were hungry. After grabbing dinner, we decided to explore the downtown Iowa City pedestrian mall area which actually means we got froyo. I wanted to go to Yotopia, because it is Iowa City's "original" frozen yogurt or something. But Brett thought he might also want to get some chocolate for later so we chose Aspen Leaf instead, because it is attached to a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. It has been a while since I've reviewed a frozen yogurt shop, so I will refresh your memory on my eight step evaluation process. 1) The variety of the flavors: is there a good selection? 2) The flavor of my choices 3) The quality of the combination of my choices 4) Th...

Oh my word I have started 2015 out with a bang. Ben & Jerry's SNL flavor on New Years Day, then Madeline, Brett, Kyle and I went to Ices Plain and Fancy on day 2 of 2015. Back in September, Brett and I visited Ices Plain and Fancy (review here ). You may remember that I was really impressed with the Pink Pepper Pickled Ginger flavor that I got and that Brett really enjoyed his Mint Chocolate Chip, but that I was overall unimpressed by the small selection. Later in the fall, the selection size of Ices Plain and Fancy went majorly up when they introduced their boozy ices. It seemed that these new boozy ices were going to be the center piece of Ices Plain and Fancy and that ice cream for those 20 and under might take a back seat. However, this was not true at all. They had expanded their nitro ices menu to include regular nitro ices and "fancy" ices. One of the fancy ices was called Campfire S'mores. That is what I initially wanted to get; however, the $6.99 pr...

When I stopped at Whole Foods not too long ago and bought the Three Twins flavor I also picked up Ben & Jerry's S'mores flavor. I haven't had it in a long time because the only place that sells it in STL is Whole Foods and I never go there. So I used this opportunity to grab a pint. I've finished finals already aka I'M DONE WITH COLLEGE. So obv I used my free time to do research about Ben & Jerry's. Things I learned: Ben & Jerry's is owned by Unilever. Unilever bought B&J's 14 years ago, but 14 years ago I was 8 so this is news to me. I'm not terribly surprised that Ben & Jerry's isn't independent, but I kind of thought they might be. The story of the sale is pretty interesting. B&J's has been cast as the ultimate darling of independent social enterprise company. And some weird corporate law thingy forced them to sell out. "Oh dear, if B&J's can't survive, no one can!" was sort of the genera...