The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

In my last post I mentioned the weird place I'm in with ice cream right now.  It's hard to buy ice cream at the grocery store because I've tried all of 2016's new flavors, as well as most Ben and Jerry's, Haagen-Dazs, and Talenti flavors. This led me to pick up a couple of Blue Bunny flavors.  The first I tried was Peanut Butter Party, described as Peanut butter ice cream, fudge and peanut butter swirls, and peanut butter cups. Lately I've been bothered by a few ice cream flavors that had a lot of elements but didn't really have a cohesive theme.  Peanut Butter Party was very busy but had cohesion. The peanut butter base was one of the best I've ever had. It reminded me of a peanut butter pie - peanut butter-y, but with an extra hint of cream cheese richness.  It could have used a touch of salt, but the peanut butter swirl provided some of this, so the omission didn't bother me too much. The fudge sauce tasted like plain old Hershey...

A few years ago, the Ben & Jerry's Target exclusive line underwent a renaming.  Things got a little confusing, and I thought I had tried all of the Target exclusive flavors, but I recently realized I never tried the chocolate and peanut butter flavor Peanut Butter World.  This ice cream is Milk Chocolate ice cream with peanut buttery swirls and chocolate cookie swirls. Is there anything better than a chocolate heavy Ben & Jerry's flavor?  No, no there is not.  The base is perfectly rich, and there is a lovely peanut butter undertone present in every bite. The peanut butter swirl is the same as that in several other Ben and Jerry's flavors.  It has a good balance of salty and sweet, leaning slightly to the salty side.  This gives a nice depth of flavor to the very sweet milk chocolate base.  The peanut butter swirl is slightly crunchy and melts down in to a smooth, viscous, sticky texture. The chocolate swirl reminde...

Ben and Jerry's Non-Dairy line is finally here!  Lizzy and I both managed to get our hands on pints of P.B. and Cookies, so we have a joint review of that flavor for you.  P.B. and Cookies is described as Vanilla non-dairy frozen dessert with chocolate sandwich cookies and crunchy peanut butter swirls. Madeline's take: I thought it was a bit weird that Ben and Jerry's premiered  their Wal-Mart exclusive flavor Peanut Butter and Cookies mere months before the release of their non-dairy line which includes the flavor ..... P.B. and cookies.  Besides the obvious milk vs. almond milk difference, the only difference between these two flavors is that Peanut Butter and Cookies has a sweet cream base and P.B. and Cookies has a vanilla base.  I didn't love the Wal-Mart exclusive, so I didn't have high hopes for P.B. and cookies, but I was pleasantly surprised. So the big question is, how is the almond milk ice cream?  It's a bit sweeter than dairy-ful Be...

I'm winning at life so hard right now because I found both the Ben and Jerry's Wal-Mart exclusive Peanut Butter and Cookies and the new Ben and Jerry's Limited Batch Cake My Day before Lizzy.  BOOM!  Just kidding, I hope Lizzy finds these soon. Today I have a review of Peanut Butter and Cookies.  There was not much hype in the ice cream blogger world (there are dozens of us ... DOZENS!) or in the world at large about this flavor, so it was kind of off of my radar until a couple weeks ago.  I knew it had been released, but I wasn't hunting it.  I was at Wal-Mart to buy a new hat, and checked the ice cream section before I left (as I compulsively do at every store), and there was Peanut Butter Cookies. Peanut Butter and Cookies is " Sweet cream ice cram with chocolate sandwich cookies and a crunchy peanut butter swirl." This flavor was good but not great.  I really liked that they went with a sweet cream base instead of a vanilla base as most cooki...

After thoroughly enjoying Edy's Salted Caramel Pretzel Frozen Custard, I thought I would give this relatively new line a third shot. So far I have had one bad experience, with the Chocolate Malt flavor, and one good one. This flavor can serve as the tie breaker! I want to start by telling you there is no description of this flavor anywhere on the container. However, on the Edy's website, the description reads A rich and creamy blend of sweet cream frozen custard with plenty of chocolate cookie pieces and peanut butter swirls in every bite . When I first ate this flavor, I assumed the base was vanilla. It is odd that vanilla is considered our default neutral base, when vanilla is a flavored ice cream, as opposed to sweet cream. As I was eating this flavor, there was something different about it compared to what I was expecting it to taste like. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on. When I looked on the Edy's website for the description, and found thi...

A week or so ago I reviewed Sam's Choice Blackberry Crumble.  It had been about a year since I tried a Sam's Choice flavor, and swore that I wouldn't wait so long for the next flavor.  I didn't wait a whole year, but it was a bit of an accident.  One of my friends recommended a Salted Caramel flavor from a different Wal-Mart brand, so I headed over to pick up a container, but they were completely out! I guess people really like it, which is a good sign for me when I finally get my hands on it. Instead I picked up two Sam's Choice flavors, a Wal-Mart exclusive Ben and Jerry's flavor and a seasonal Ben and Jerry's flavor.  Thank god for self-checkout! I broke open the Sam's Choice Peanut Butter Chocolate first.  This is Chocolate ice cream with peanut butter ripple and peanut butter cup pieces. The chocolate base was a milk chocolate base.  It was a bit icy, and definitely could have had a stronger chocolate flavor. In most cases, a mediocre ...

Okay folks, the moment you have all been waiting for: Iowa City ice cream. One part about moving to Iowa City which is kind of a bummer is I'm no longer along the Big Muddy Mississippi River. The name of our blog is now slightly less relevant. When I pointed this out to my dad he responded, "But you're near the Iowa River which connects to the Mississippi!" But with that logic you could basically move anywhere in the United States and that's not what we were going for when we named this blog.  Oh well. Back to ice cream. There is one ice cream shop in Iowa City that isn't a chain or froyo or something, and it is Heyn's. My roommate and two of her friends were going a couple of days ago. Luckily, she's already got my number and asked if I wanted to join. If you remember, I tried to go to Heyn's when I visited the campus back in March, but they were closed because of a strange incident in which someone called the store and threatened the employees ...

Growing up, arctic was one of those words I had a lot of trouble spelling when I was growing up. Mostly because nobody actually pronounces the first "c." Writing this blog post is going to be a spelling struggle. It was my last day in Syracuse and my grandmother and I realized we had only been to one ice cream shop my whole visit. Luckily, my flight wasn't until the afternoon, so there was time to visit one more. Arctic Island is not too far down the road from Gannon's. And in internet ice cream world (aka people commenting on a list of the best ice cream shops in the area) there is much debate about which is better, Gannon's or Arctic Island. My cousins Jack and Ben, used to like Arctic Island more than Gannon's, but as of late the tides have turned. Given the amount of ice cream my cousin, Jack, eats (he had three times the amount of ice cream I did when we were at Gannon's), I think their opinions are trustworthy. The big deal at Arctic Is...

A few months ago I tried Culinary Circle brand ice cream for the first time. I had the flavor Caramel Brownie Escape  flavor, which was surprisingly amazing for the price point.  On Saturday, Kyle and I went salsa dancing, and on the way home decided we needed to stop at the grocery store to pick up some mad snacks.  Snacks on snacks on snacks.  Of course, my go to snack is ice cream, so I headed straight for the freezer section. Culinary Circle was on sale 2 for $6, so that made the decision of which ice cream to buy easy peasy. Kyle and I each picked one flavor.  My pick was Chocolate Peanut Butter Dream, and that's the flavor we cracked open first. This didn't have a description, but it was a chocolate base with peanut butter cups and a peanut butter swirl. The chocolate base was not the greatest chocolate ice cream, but it wasn't terrible. It could have had a more intense chocolate flavor. I liked it more in the Caramel Brownie Escape flavor. Int...

Guuuuuyyyssssssss. I'm so lazy. I've done seriously nothing since I finished grading finals. I finished this container of frozen yogurt at least a week ago and am just now writing about it. Uggghhhhhh, I don't even want to write this review even though I love writing about ice cream!  It's Newton's first law of laziness, yo. But, I shall power on for you, dearest reader! The frozen yogurt I am putting off reviewing is Kemp's Frozen Yogurt Shop Peanut Butter Cup.  This is described as Creamy chocolate frozen yogurt with thick peanut butter swirl and chunks of peanut butter cup topping. I've seen this line of frozen yogurt around for a while, but I think it's relatively new (like at least under a year old).  I have been meaning to pick one of these up for a while, and finally got around to it.  I decided on the chocolate peanut butter because I wanted to make sure I got something Kyle would like.  Also, who doesn't love the chocolate and pe...

When I was visiting STL last weekend, I needed to pick up some groceries on Sunday, which obviously meant getting some ice cream. Since I can't take ice cream back to Eldon with me, seeing as it would melt in the car, this meant I needed to get Brett to agree to help me finish whatever pint of ice cream I got in one sitting. He reluctantly  agreed. I wanted to get something that I haven't really been able to find in Eldon/the Lake area to make it a worthwhile pint in one sitting experience. There might  be Oberweis at the Dierberg's at the Lake, but I'm not sure; however, I know there isn't any in Eldon or at the HyVee at the Lake, which I go to more often than Dierberg's. The Schnucks' Brett and I were at only had Chocolate, Vanilla, Butter Pecan and Chocolate Peanut Butter Oberweis. The Chocolate Peanut Butter really seemed like it would hit the spot. For those of you that are not from/do not live in the Midwest, Oberweis is a a dairy company t...

Ben & Jerry's recently released a new Wal-Mart exclusive flavor, Peanut Butter Brownie Sundae. I was pretty excited to hear this news, because I love peanut butter and I love brownies. Can you do better than combining them? I think not. However, I don't love Wal-Mart. I try to shop there only when I am buying ice cream that I can't get anywhere else, like exclusive flavors and Sam's Choice ice cream (I still really want to try their Coffee and Donuts flavor which Madeline reviewed here ). But no need to dwell on the negatives of Wal-Mart. Instead, lets talk about the really exciting company that makes the brownies for Ben & Jerry's, Greyston Bakery!! Ben & Jerry's and Greyston Bakery have been working together since 1988. I am pretty surprised that I didn't know more about this company up until this point; however, this is  the first Ben & Jerry's flavor with brownies I have reviewed. The company opened in 1982 and has always trie...

Dearest reader. I have come to a sad realization. I have not reviewed a single Haagen Dazs flavor throughout the entire course of this blog. I apologize. Good old HD is one of the biggest players in the business. A review of them from me is long overdue. The flavor I picked is the classic Chocolate Peanut Butter. I would say this flavor is my second or third favorite flavor produced by Haagen Dazs, White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle being number 1 and Caramel Cone being up there in the mix. I opened this pint around midnight last night, only the most appropriate time to eat Haagen Dazs. I had just watched World War Z (actually a pretty good movie) with some friends and came to the realization, as I frequently do, that no I really actually don't like scary movies. Thus sitting on my bed with the lights on eating a decadent ice cream while telling myself "That's just screeching tires, not the screeching of zombies" was obviously the only way I could end my night....