The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

In celebration of the recent  ice cream run  which started at Sonny's Cafe, I picked up a pint of Sonny's Gingerroot Sorbet.  Ginger is one of my favorite flavors of all times, but I don't often see it translated into ice cream or sorbet.  If it is, it is often mixed in with another flavor rather than the star of the show.  Needless to say, I was very excited by this flavor but also a bit worried that it wouldn't live up to my expectations.  I needn't have worried because after only a single bite I decided this was one of my favorite sorbets of all time.  I mean SHUT THE FRONT DOOR, this flavor is unbelievable. Everything about this concoction was total perfection.  The texture was not at all icy, but also wasn't creamy; which would have been inappropriate for a ginger flavor.  It felt hydrating and refreshing, and enhanced the flavor rather than distracting from it.  There was also a really nice bubbly sensation that made even the...

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...

Thank goodness for hippie California. I'm traveling right now, and needed some groceries, so stopped by the grocery store closest to where I'm staying. The ice cream selection wasn't necessarily that exciting in this store, except for the Coconut Bliss selection!  They had a whole, long row of Coconut Bliss flavors, and a bunch I had never seen before. Only in California can you find great beaches, a bunch of unvaccinated children, and lots of vegan ice cream options. What a fabulous combination. and by fabulous I mean beaches and ice cream are great and unvaccinated children terrify me. After agonizing over the decision for a while, I picked the Ginger Cookie Caramel flavor, because I had heard good things about it and I love ginger cookies. This flavor is described as Spicy Cookies and Creamy Caramel in Rich Vanilla . The first look upon opening the pint was pretty WOW. I saw SEVEN different cookies chunks and a light, this caramel swirl. My first bite tasted ...

I'm going to start this review by letting you all, Dearest Readers, know that I feel perfectly fine. I am not sick and I obviously have not keeled over and died. I was at HyVee the other day and found these ice cream sandwiches from Whitey's. I don't remember seeing them in my HyVee before then. They are, however, quite clearly a fall themed dessert. The description of this treat is A delicious SEASONAL blend of our famous pumpkin ice cream sandwiched between two Homemade Spice cookies!  (emphasis in original). I was, to say the least, a bit surprised to find these in stores in February. I was also excited. In my opinion, it is a bummer pumpkin is relegated to a seasonal dessert flavor. Pumpkin is great, and I would like to eat pumpkin ice cream all year long. I would even take simply being able to eat pumpkin all year long. A few days after purchasing this ice cream sandwich, I was trying to find some canned pumpkin to make pumpkin curry, and couldn't find any. W...

I know I am way behind on the Haagen Dazs Artisan Collection flavors. But I only recently moved out of rural Missouri and my Haagen Dazs flavor selection was not great there. This past weekend I moved to Iowa City and high on my to-do list was going to the nearest HyVee to check out the ice cream section. And buy food because I guess it is kind of necessary for sustainment of life. The HyVee closest to me isn't as big as one a bit further away, but their ice cream selection was decent. I do know I will be going to the other HyVee every once in a while because I am convinced their ice cream section is what heaven looks like. But lo and behold, in my little HyVee there was the Haagen Dazs Artisan Collection Ginger Molasses Cookie which I had not been able to find in Eldon! There was also the Applewood Smoked Caramel Almond which has been pretty elusive for a lot of people. So look forward to my take on that flavor. This flavor is a collaboration with The Good Batch, a bak...

Right before I ran the Go! St. Louis Marathon I asked the internet what ice cream I should eat the day before the race. Someone suggested Clementine's ice cream. I looked the place up and saw it didn't open until May, so just crossed that one off the list. However, in the days after the marathon, I found and followed Clementine's on Twitter. We started tweeting back and forth and they asked me if I had ever tried Bourbon Kentucky Pie or the Salted Crack Caramel. Obviously, I replied and was like, "No! How do I get it in my mouth?!" (Since Clementine's makes naughty ice cream I am in no way obligated to make this post PG.) The answer shone down from the ice cream heavens: Delivery!! Clementine's will deliver ice cream to your door. There is nothing more I could ask for in life than ice cream being delivered to my doorstep. When I called Tamara Keefe, the owner of Clementine's, to place my order, we ended up having a pretty long conversation about Cl...

Oh man, another slam dunk from the new-ish Haagen-Dazs Artisan collection.  Ginger Molasses Cookie is a collaboration with  The Good Batch  bakery in Brooklyn, NY.  (Who, by the way, has a cookie of the month subscription if anyone wants to, like, buy that for me or something.)  Haagen-Dazs describes this flavor as Ginger molasses cookie pieces are mixed into gourmet vanilla cinnamon ice cream to create an artisan recipe inspired by the renowned bakery treats of The Good Batch in Brooklyn. First I'll talk about the base.  I think this is the first time, or at least the first time in recent memory that I have had a vanilla cinnamon base, and I don't understand why it isn't used more often.  Often, a plain cinnamon base has a very harsh base.  Here, the addition of vanilla balanced the cinnamon very well.  The vanilla gave the base flavor some warmth and depth to balance out the spiciness of the cinnamon and the cookies.  Also, y...

Two weeks ago I finally had the opportunity to check out Ices Plain and Fancy. Ices Plain and Fancy (can I just call it IPF for the rest of this post?) is a new ice cream shop in St. Louis. It opened this summer and I heard about it in late August. Not long after I heard about this unique little ice cream shop, Madeline's friend from high school, Zach, requested that she review IPF. I decided to just take over so Zach didn't have to wait until Thanksgiving to get a review. IPF is in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis. Brett and I hopped over there after a nice afternoon at the Botanical gardens. As we drove up, we thought Siri might have been leading us astray. We were in a totally residential area; no other shops or stores in sight. I honestly loved the location of IPF. It livened up the block and it is so nice that it is so close to places like the Botanical Gardens, Tower Grove Park, but it still seems hidden away. Now to actually talk about ice cream. There are no...

So Madeline  and I have gotten a bit out of order here at the Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog. A while ago, dear reader, you may remember that we tried to make ice cream and failed. We told you that we would be making popsicles with the peach ginger ice cream base. We made and ate quite a few of them days ago and just haven't gotten our lazy butts around to writing about them. I'm not sure if we started at the bottom, but now we're here; the peach pops. We poured the peach pop base into little paper Dixie Cups, and put them into the freezer. We walked to Madeline's handy dandy corner market Joe's to see if they had popsicle sticks. The plan was to wait until the pops were slightly frozen to put in the popsicle sticks so they would stay up right. At Joe's there were no popsicle sticks but they had plastic utensils which we thought would work just fine. After much debate we chose to use spoons rather than forks so we wouldn't stab ourselves in the mouth. Typically,...

So blogger.com is a bit silly and won't let both Madeline and I contribute to the same post from our two different accounts. Lame. So Lizzy will be writing in this font. And Madeline will be writing in this font.  Yesterday, Madeline and I attempted to make ice cream with her vintage ice cream maker she got as a birthday present from our parents. We decided to make Rocky Road (chocolate ice cream with marshmallows and pecans) and Ginger Peach ice creams. We had a recipe for the Rocky Road and a Peach ice cream recipe and we were just sort of winging it with the ginger part of things. We bought much dairy product at the grocery store and very peaches and even more ginger. Making the bases was super easy and they tasted delicious from our samplings. We took everything over to Madeline's friends' house, bought lots of ice and lots of salt and we were all set to get churning.  Such dairy. Wow. At first things seemed to be going great.  We had alternating layers of ice and...

As Madeline already mentioned, I am visiting her in Minneapolis. Obviously the first thing we did was go to an ice cream shop. Sebastian Joe's was just the perfect little neighborhood ice cream shop. It opens at 7am almost daily because it also serves coffee and coffee drinks, but this seems like the type of place that if you wanted a cone of ice cream with your morning coffee, you could do that. The people working were friendly, the atmosphere was relaxed, and on a slow day like the one we went I bet I could even park at one of their tables and read a book or do homework for a few hours. I got two flavors, an inventive one and a classic. After long discussions with my friend Lizzie, I have decided something about ice cream shops that sell crazy flavors. These shops are all well and good, fabulous actually, as long as they have perfected some basic flavors. If you can't give me a delicious chocolatey creation I don't want your lemon-chili-basil-vanilla-tea flavor. It'...

Sorry I didn't take any pictures.  I get really nervous when I eat ice cream in a cone, because I would be devastated if my ice cream fell over.  I didn't want my ice cream to start melting during a photo shoot in the summer sun. I mentioned way back in my intro post that I was underwhelmed by  Sebastian Joe's  ice cream the first time I tried it.  I like that they offered unique/weird flavors like Roasted Garlic Almond Chip (which I had a sample of.  It was weird.  Not bad, but I wouldn't want more than a bite of it).  My first time there, I got two scoops in a waffle cone: one scoop of Cinnamon and one scoop of Mandarin Orange.  I probably should have gone with something chocolate-y, but  oranges with cinnamon  is one of my favorite summertime desserts.  I was underwhelmed.  I felt the cinnamon ice cream was way too creamy (like, ok, I know it's ice cream and this is a stupid thing to say), and needed a much stronger ...