The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

With the current end-of-summer lack of new and exciting ice creams, I decided to stop in at trusty Tim and Tom's Speedy Market to see if they had any interesting ice creams stocked, and they did not disappoint. I picked up a half-pint of new-to-me, Minnesota-made Contented Cow Creamery Mocha Chip. Contented Cow Creamery was started by two Carleton College students. They source their dairy, maple syrup, and honey from Minnesota, and use Peace Coffee for their Mocha Chip flavor. You can read more about the business  here  and on their  facebook page. I really, really wanted to like this ice cream. It's such a great story. College students! Local dairy farmers! Unfortunately, I didn't think the ice cream was quite up to par. Some of the issue may be with Tim and Tom's and not with the ice cream itself, and I'll try to point out the causes of the issues as I bring them up. The coffee base is made with Peace Coffee, a local organization that sources and roasts...

Haagen-Dazs recently released a line of four non-dairy flavors exclusively available at Target to surprisingly little fanfare. I picked up the two chocolate flavors Mocha Chocolate Cookie and Chocolate Salted Fudge Truffle, because chocolate.  These flavors were both very good, and I was originally planning to write two separate reviews but they tasted so similar that I wanted emphasize their similarity by comparing and contrasting them within one review. Mocha Chocolate Cookie: A luxurious foundation of rich Belgian chocolate and fragrant coffee is blended together with swirls of cookie crumble and pieces of chocolate cookie. Chocolate Salted Fudge Truffle: We start with lavishly rich Belgian chocolate for that truer chocolate flavor, before blending in swirls of salted fudge and chunks of fudge truffle for the ultimate indulgence. Most non-dairy ice cream, including Ben and Jerry's line and many brands specializing in non-dairy desserts substitute almond, cashew, or...

One thing that I think Big Muddy's does better than other ice cream bloggers is bring you info about scoop shops in interesting corner's of the country. We love hidden gems. Yeah, yeah other ice cream bloggers can go on for days about the myriad of scoop shops in NYC and LA, but who knew Utah had such a hip ice cream scene until Madeline visited? Probably no one outside of Utah, that's who. And who knew that some of the most innovative ice cream flavors are being thought up in Omaha, NE? Probably no one outside of Omaha. When Madeline and I recently visited Omaha to watch our cousin compete in the US Triathlon Age Group Championships we stopped by Ted and Wally's to grab some tasty frozen treats. The line was out the door and around the corner, so we were hopeful that we were about to have some tasty ice cream. When we saw the flavor list, it wasn't the longest we'd ever seen, but I would go so far as to say it was THE most unique flavor list I've ev...

Mocha Me Happy is the third and final in my series of Blue Bunny reviews. (But it's not the last Blue Bunny flavor I'll ever review!) I'll be honest, when I first spied this flavor I wasn't too excited about it, but I picked it up because I knew my boyfriend Kyle would like the flavor.  He's a fan of chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, coffee, and other ice creams of that ilk, and sometimes he gets a bit grumbly that I often buy ice cream that he doesn't like.  Every once in a while I make sure to pick up something I know he will eat.  It wasn't until I had some of the ice cream and went back to read the description that I got really excited about this flavor.  Mocha Me Hoppy is Coffee ice cream with hazelnut flavored mocha coffee swirl and cake pieces. The coffee base was very creamy and sweet, but this was appropriate as Blue Bunny is going for a mocha flavor rather than a coffee flavor here.  As with other Blue Bunny flavors, the base ice cr...

These past few weeks have been quite exciting for me on the ice cream front. I received my first ever free ice cream as a blogger from New Orleans Ice Cream Co., I got some coupons from Luna and Larry's, I finally found Cake My Day last night at HyvVee and three of the Ben & Jerry's Non-Dairy flavors!! In addition, you may remember that not long ago I hit up New Pioneer Co-Op for the first time, and when I reviewed Ciao Bella Sea Salt Caramel Gelato Squares I mentioned seeing a new brand of gelato. Well I've finally eaten that gelato and did the research on what brand this was. This is not any old gelato brand, this is gelato from a gelateria right here in IOWA! I've tried all of the local frozen desserts around Iowa City, but I haven't yet expanded my sights to the greater Iowa River Corridor region, including Cedar Rapids and North Liberty. In fact, I haven't even done research on what exists. So of course when I picked up this pint of Turtle Mocha, ...

The best part about writing this blog is eating lots of tasty ice cream! The second best part is hearing about when our Dearest Readers enjoyed a post, especially if those Dearest Readers are ice cream makers! After eating, loving, and reviewing the Cinnamon & Bits flavor from Batch Ice Cream, the Batch Instragram account comment on my post saying how much they enjoyed the review! Seeing their comment made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, so while back in Boston, I figured I'd give another one of their flavors a try! This time I picked up Mocha Chip, because mocha and coffee ice creams are some of Brett's favorites. This flavor is described as A trifecta of deliciousness - we blend together coffee from the mountains of Columbia, organic cocoa from the Dominican Republic, and organic dark Belgian chocolate chips to create this new old-school classic. The base flavor of this ice cream featured a milky, creamy, chocolatey flavor. The coffee flavor was light, ...

Oh boy this weekend was full of fun adventures and stressful adventures. Which means I am totally swamped with work for grad school. Which means I should spend my reviewing ice cream. Yep. Logic. I has it. This weekend I flew to Bellingham, Washington to visit the Ducks (my aunt, uncle, and cousin) and run a trail race. (Yes this also means a review of everybody's favorite, quirky, West Coast ice cream shop, Mallard is coming soon!) I flew United, which was probably mistake number one, and both legs of my flight got majorly delayed. Long story short, I spent a long time in the Denver airport. Most of my Denver airport time has been spent in the terminal with the Ben & Jerry's, which I was not in this time. This terminal had a TCBY, a USwirl (a froyo placed owned by Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, the Iowa City version of this shop is called Aspen Leaf), and Haagen-Dazs. I haven't had TCBY before, and the race I was running the next day was sponsored by TCBY so I...

Heyn's, you're killing it. I am definitely on pace to try every Heyn's flavor before I finish at Iowa and of the four flavors I have tried so far, I love every single one. All four are definitely going to get serious consideration for various superlatives when Madeline and I do our end of the year post for 2015. Obviously, the last ice cream Brett and I had before he left had to be a trip to Heyn's. Once again, I picked two crazy, chunky, desserty flavors, because they looked too good to pass up. The two I chose were Kara's Creation and Heavenly Hazelnut. I actually got pictures of the adorable hand drawn flavor signs this time! Kara's Creation is described as Vanilla ice cream, pralines, Oreos, and swirls of caramel. There was no description of Heavenly Hazelnut at the shop, but on the website it is described as Hazelnut ice cream, swirls of mocha fudge, coffee-flavored toffee pieces, and chocolate chunks . Gosh, where do I even start with eithe...

You may have gathered, Dearest Reader, Brett visited me in Central Missouri not long ago. This has meant lots of ice cream and not a lot of ice cream reviewing. I've got a major back log and I am now playing major catch up. Who has time for review writing when there are so many activities?! And by activities I mean watching the television show Avatar and eating ice cream. One evening, about two hours into a five hour Avatar binge session Brett asked me if I wanted to go get ice cream. I almost broke up with him on the spot for phrasing it as a question. However, my good sense prevailed and we drove to the store and got ice cream and I did not break up with him. Two important details to set the scene. 1) We were actually in St. Louis. I attended the wedding of two friends, so we spent a weekend in Fenton. 2) It was 10:00PM so any ice cream or fro yo shop in Fenton was closed. Thus, the obvious choice was to go to Dierbergs, which has the best ice cream selection of any grocery...

Lizzy and I finally have our phalanges on the eagerly awaited Ben and Jerry's Cookie Cores!  Since we got these from our respective Targets as approximately the same time, we decided to write joint reviews of all three.  Lizzy suggested we start with Boom Chocolatta and off we went! This is described as Mocha & Caramel ice creams with chocolate cookies, fudge flakes and a chocolate cookie core. Here's my (Madeline) take: When you eat Ben and Jerry's core ice creams you definitely have to go in with a strategy.  There are so many different components.  Do you try to get balanced spoonfuls? Do you try to sample each element individually? Do you dive in with no regard for life and limb and wake up 5 minutes later on the floor with ice cream dripping down your chin?  I chose to try each element individually; however, I suggest you do not use this approach because individually each element (except the core) was kind of 'meh,' but together they were l...

Man, Lizzy keeps beating me to the punch on these shared reviews! As you already know I spent a lovely 8 days at home in St. Louis, during which I got to see Lizzy.  Before I came home we were drawing up a list of potential ice cream shops to visit.  (These things take hours of serious planning.)  We both agreed that, no matter what, we had to stop by Ted Drewes Frozen Custard. Ted Drewes is a St. Louis institution.  I literally cannot think of one native St. Louisan I know who would not put Ted Drewes in the top-3 of must-do attractions when visiting St. Louis. As you can tell by the name, Ted Drewes does not serve ice cream, they serve frozen custard, which has more cream and egg yolk than ice cream.  Ted Drewes serves a multitude of different frozen custard sundaes, but their signature offering is the 'concrete.'  A concrete is served in the same type of cup as a milkshake but is much, much thicker in texture.  It is in fact, so thick that yo...