The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

After tasting and appreciating what Farr did with cookie dough in their  Cookie Dough Brownie  I couldn't resist grabbing a pint of Cookie Dough Caramel. Cookie Dough Caramel is Vanilla flavored custard with rich caramel ripple and cookie dough pieces. I won't comment on the texture because I walked home from the grocery store after purchasing this, and it had enough time to melt a bit and then refreeze in the freezer so there were a few ice crystals.  The Cookie Dough Brownie had a great texture, and I assume this would have the same if you got it home fast enough. The vanilla base wasn't anything remarkable, but it wasn't offensive either.  There were so many caramel swirls and they were so thick that it was almost as if the custard had a vanilla-caramel base rather than a plain vanilla base.  This was a pretty mild and sweet caramel rather than dark or buttery.. The cookie dough pieces were very grainy and tasted eggier than they did in the ...

On our last Sunday in Utah, a group of us did another hike/ice cream combo.  I mean .... best combo ever or best combo ever?  Let me set the scene for you.  5:45pm. A group of five hungry and tired mathematicians determined to get ice cream.  Many things in Utah, particularly small town Utah, are closed on Sundays.  Everything in Midway is closed.  Granny's Drive In in neighboring Heber City is open until 6pm.  Hit the gas.  We made it with a few minutes to spare and weren't even the last in line! As far as ice cream goes, Granny's does exclusively shakes and malts, and they have SO many delicious-sounding options.  I couldn't decide, so I asked the employee taking orders about her favorite flavor.  With absolutely zero hesitation, she enthusiastically exclaimed, "Raspberry!" I couldn't not get a raspberry shake after that. I got a size small because I had ice cream I had to eat later that night (I bought way too much ice cream way ...

On my last trip to the grocery store in Midway I saw that ice cream was on sale so I picked up a couple pints including Tillamook Toasted Coconut Fudge Gelato. This gelato is Silky toasted coconut gelato and rich chocolate fudge, sprinkled with crunchy coconut flakes. Interestingly, Tillamook went with the technique of putting mix-ins on top of the gelato, something usually reserved for scoop shops where the shallow gelato pans make it easy to get a bit of topping in each serving.  Because a pint is deeper than it is wide, it would be kind of hard to get the toasted coconut topping in every bowlful unless you ate the whole pint at once, and the coconut topping was critical to the balance of the flavor. The coconut base was good, but didn't read as toasted coconut to me.  It had a slight hint of sunscreen coconut instead of the rich warm flavor of toasted coconut.  This was actually quite good in combination with the toasted coconut flakes, as the flavor of th...

On my second trip to Timpfreeze, I decided to try a dip cone.  They have vanilla and pineapple soft serve and tons of different dip options.  The ones I remember are chocolate, cherry, butterscotch, and toasted coconut.  There were definitely more options, and they have more listed on their website , but I don't think the website menu is 100% accurate. If someone offers me butterscotch I'm literally incapable of refusing, so I originally ordered a vanilla with butterscotch dip cone.  Unfortunately the butterscotch dip had come out slightly burnt, so I instead went with pineapple and toasted coconut. So summery! They put a little plastic figure in each soft serve cone. So cute! I got a mermaid but I also saw someone with a brontosaur. Individually, the toasted coconut shell and the pineapple soft serve were great, but it didn't turn out to be a great combo.  The toasted coconut shell was amazing and would get 🍦🍦🍦🍦/4 cones on its own.  I love ...

Not only was the weekend ice cream crew willing to go out of their way to get ice cream in Provo, they were even game to stop at two separate ice cream shops.  The first was the excellent Rockwell Ice Cream Co (review  here ) and the second was Roll With It Creamery, specializing in Thai rolled ice cream. What is Thai rolled ice cream?  Basically, you start with liquid ice cream base, pour it in a thin layer on flat, cold metal surface and stir and scrape it until it freezes.  When it is frozen into a sheet, you take a spatula and scrape it off of the metal plate using a spatula into a roll. I've wanted to try Thai rolled ice cream ever since it became a ~thing~ on Instagram, and never in my life did I think I'd get to try it in Utah.  I thought I'd have to travel to California or New York or wait months for the trend to percolate to the rest of the country.  I've had multiple people tell me (somewhat jokingly and somewhat not) that they eat lots o...

So I'm unofficially declaring Provo the ice cream capital of Utah.  Over the past weekend a group of us from the math institute I'm visiting went for a hike on Mount Timpanogos and then went to Provo for ice cream, the perfect post-hike activity.  We stopped at two shops: Rockwell Ice Cream Co, a more traditional scoop shop and Roll With It Creamery, which does Thai-style rolled ice cream.  On the drive out of Provo, I saw at one more ice cream shop, a frozen custard shop, and at least three snow cone places, in addition to BYU Creamery, a chain grocery stores at BYU that produces their own ice cream, hence the declaration of 'Ice Cream Capital of Utah.' What a good looking ice cream crew!  Also, thanks Lalit for driving to Provo! Rockwell Ice Cream Co was our first stop.  I feel like there is a slight tension between traditionalist and hipster ice cream shops, and Rockwell Ice Cream Co manages to have a foot in both worlds without making any sacrifices ...

There are a few ice cream offerings in Midway, UT and the first I tried was Timp Freeze .  Timp Freeze is your typical small town summer burger and shake/ice cream place with a window for ordering and outdoor seating. I didn't know if I would have a chance to try Timp Freeze for a second time (I really hope I do!) so I asked a couple of the workers for their opinion about the single best dessert offering.  They suggested I either try a peach shake or a grasshopper shake, and I wasn't really feeling anything minty, so I went with the peach shake. I was expecting a typical peach shake, with either real peach or peach syrup blended into ice cream.  This was something totally and completely different.  I would actually liken this more to the soft-serve version of a concrete than a milkshake. The shake was simple: vanilla soft serve with pieces of real (fresh not frozen) peach mixed in, and it was amazingly good.  Normally when people list of the qualities ...

Lizzy and I started this blog because we love ice cream and we wanted to share this love with the world.  One thing I love about writing this blog, which I did not anticipate at all, is interacting with readers who are sharing their own love of ice cream with us.  I recently had an awesome interaction with reader Rachel C. who gave me tons and tons of great information about good ice cream shops in Utah, several brands to try, and some typically 'Utah' flavors. Red Button Vintage Creamery is one of the brands she recommended, and specifically their Black Licorice Flavor.  As chance would have it, I already had a container of this in my freezer!  The blurb about this flavor on the website reads A flavor for the more refined palate, our Black Licorice ice cream is a decadent and luxurious treat your tastebuds will love. Cute packaging! Not exactly descriptive of the flavor, but you don't really need much description of black licorice, I suppose. So, I'm d...

I'm in Utah for the next three weeks to do math, but I think I'm more excited about new ice cream brands and trail running than I am about math.  Oh well. Gratuitous trail shot! I'm staying at the Zermatt Resort in Midway, UT (hopefully there aren't any creepy stalkers out there!).  The whole place is very weird. It's Switzerland-themed, so all of the streets and buildings have names like 'Innsbruck' (which is in Austria, so, fail), 'The Bernese Event Center,' 'The Grand Matterhorn Ballroom,' so obviously there is a bakery/gelateria called Backerei & Eis.  I was super excited that I had access to gelato literally a minute away from my front door, but unfortunately their gelato was not great. Backerei & Eis had a pretty decent flavor selection, and I chose two of the odder/more unique flavors: Black Currant and Root Beer Float. I'll address the texture first because both flavors had a similar texture and similar issues. ...