The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

2018 is off to a pretty good start here in the ice cream world. Ben & Jerry's announced their new flavors the other day (and they are lit), Blue Bunny 2018 limited edition flavors are out (including this Cookie Butter flavor), and most importantly, I , Lizzy Handschy, am back to blogging. Just kidding about that being the most important. Right now the most important to us is this new Blue Bunny flavor. It is described as Speculoos cookie flavored ice cream, cinnamon graham and speculoos caramel swirls, and speculoos cookie dough chunks . This flavor is basically one step away from spooning cookie butter straight from the jar into your mouth. It is pretty one note, with a touch of nuance. The base was strong and speculoos was really the main flavor of the ice cream. The speculoos cookie dough chunks tasted pretty similar to the base, but with a bit of eggy-ness of cookie dough. I also don't think I know of another flavor that has speculoos cookie dough , so that...

Hello friends! I, too, promise that I am not dead. I haven't been eating a ton of ice cream or writing reviews because I am off doing my summer research. I've been very busy with that, and a lot of my research takes place in the evening when I'm normally eating ice cream. While I've been satisfying my dessert stomach with plenty of donuts, instead, that means you, Dearest Reader, haven't been getting very many reviews. But have no fear, you obviously have one coming to you right now! My research is in a city a bit bigger than Iowa City that luckily has a Trader Joe's!! So while the Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter Ice Cream has been out forever, I haven't lived in a city with a Trader Joe's for a while. As a lover of all things cookie butter, I've been wanting to try this flavor forever  and yay I finally got an opportunity! This flavor is a vanilla base, speculoos cookie pieces, and a cookie butter swirl. Okay to start, the base of t...

While I patiently (Ok, honestly, not so patiently) wait for new 2017 flavors to arrive I decided to make my way through some frozen yogurts that I missed last year.  When it comes to grocery store frozen yogurt, Kemps is the hands-down champion.  Their frozen yogurt is rich and creamy and more like ice cream than yogurt you would find at a shop. I'm obsessed with all things speculoos, so I grabbed Kemps Frozen Yogurt Shop Cinnamon Spice Cookie, described as Caramel frozen yogurt with a caramel swirl and spiced cookie pieces topped with cinnamon chips. Kemps tweeted about this flavor in May, billing it as a new flavor, but I don't currently see it listed on their website.  Hopefully they didn't take this product away after only 6 months! I love the Frozen Yogurt Shop line.  I think too many frozen yogurt lines try to appel to the 'health dessert' sector of the market so not enough of them are super chunky, and I'm glad Kemps pounced on the opportunit...

Guys. I liked speculoos cookies before they were cool, okay. I liked speculoos cookies before I even really knew what they were, and just knew them as the cookies you got on Delta flights.  Then Trader Joe's came along and made Speculoos Cookie Butter (which, btw, you can get Biscoff spread for way cheaper and it's the same thing).  Then Ben and Jerry's came along and made Spectacular Speculoos, their speculoos cookie core ice cream.  Now everybody and their uncle is on the speculoos train! And, you know what, I'm not even mad. MORE SPECULOOS FOR EVERYONE! If you don't know what speculoos (sometimes English-ized as speculaas) is, you've probably been living under a rock and it's now time to emerge. Speculoos are a thin, buttery, crunchy, delicate shortbread cookie spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. Sam's Choice Cookie Butter ice cream is based on speculoos cookies though they don't state that explicitly.  The ice cream is Vanilla ice cream with ...

I'm taking a quick break from my regularly scheduled peppermint programming to bring you a review of Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter Ice Cream, the second flavor I picked up during a recent trip to TJ's! I think the obvious question everyone is asking is how does this compare to Ben and Jerry's Spectacular Speculoos Cookie Core?  I'll do an independent review of this flavor and answer that question at the end. The description of this flavor reads: ..... Ok, there's no description on the container, but it's ice cream with speculoos cookie butter chunks. If you've never had speculoos cookies (first, what is wrong with you!?) they are a delicate, crunchy, spiced cookie from Belgium.  If you've ever seen Biscoff cookies in your local grocery store or a Delta flight, you've seen a speculoos cookie.  These are most commonly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, but I've also seen recipes that additionally involve cloves and ...

Moving to a new place is fun and exciting, especially because it means new food adventures! In addition to new scoop shops, there are new grocery stores to visit. My roommate suggested I check out a new grocery store in town, Lucky's Market. Lucky's is a chain grocery store I would say is somewhere on the continuum between Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. It isn't quite as expensive and snobbish as Whole Foods, but not quite as cheap as Trader Joe's, as it does carry a lot of different brands. When I shopped there last weekend, I picked up two pints of ice cream. One pint was of a brand new to me (which I won't reveal until I write the review!!) and a pint of Steve's. I have only had one flavor of Steve's before this, but not for lack of trying. Their flavors sound incredibly interesting, but they aren't sold in a ton of stores. Steve's is also descended from the scoop shop that first mixed candies and such into ice cream. What I'm trying ...

Next in our cookie core reviews we have Spectacular Speculoos.  This is described as Dark caramel and vanilla ice creams with speculoos cookies and a speculoos cookie butter core. Madeline's Review:  The first thing I expected to taste in the ice cream was the spicy goodness of speculoos cookies, but the first thing I actually tasted was vanilla.  I won't say much about the vanilla base because it is the same old Ben and Jerry's vanilla base. The dark caramel was interesting.  I know what makes chocolate dark, but I do not know what makes caramel dark.  I suppose this caramel ice cream leaned a bit toward molasses flavor, but not that much.  Overall, it was a pretty mild flavor. The speculoos cookie chunks were super duper crunchy, which was awesome, and they were also quite tasty. The speculoos cookie core didn't have quite the same crunch as the other cookie cores (but this might be due to fluctuations in freezer temperature).  It...