The Big Muddy Ice Cream Blog

I picked up the Heath Klondike Bars the same day I picked up the Mint Chocolate Chip Klondike Bars. While the Mint Chocolate Chip bars were, quite honestly, crap, and currently hold last place in my Klondike-a-thon, the Health Klondike Bars have jumped into the top spot. The Heath bars are Luscious HEATH Bar flavored ice cream covered in a crunchy milk chocolatey coating mixed with delectable HEATH Bar pieces. The classic Klondike bar shell has deep toffee notes, and seems like it was absolutely destined for the addition of toffee pieces and toffee ice cream.  I almost consider these enhanced classic Klondike bars rather than an entirely different flavor. The vanilla ice cream is the weak point of classic Klondike bars, and the swap for Heath ice cream is perfection. The heath ice cream is still lightly flavored, but not bland like the vanilla. It balances the chocolate shell instead of letting it take over. The Heath pieces in the shell enhance the overall to...

I haven't really been keeping track of or hunting down the new Blue Bunny flavors, so I was pleasantly surprised to find Toffee Brownie Twist, toffee ice cream, caramel fudge swirl, brownie chunks, toffee pieces, at my local Wal-Mart. I was pretty excited to see Blue Bunny attempt a toffee base as well as toffee mix-ins, and also the toffee/brownie combo which is not often done. The base initially tastes very buttery with a hint of that unique toffee taste. Side note, it is super  hard to describe how things taste. Toffee just tastes like toffee, duh! As I ate more of the ice cream, the toffee flavor of the base faded and was overwhelmed by the brownie and toffee mix-ins. The brownies were large, dense, and moist. They could have been a touch fudgier, but no big complaints. The toffee pieces were also large and added a delightful crunch. I feel like toffee is either great or disgusting. All good toffee tastes pretty much the same, and all bad toffee tastes equally nasty....

Yes, you read that correctly. While in Canada, I got a Skor Blizzard. Pre-ice cream blog days, Madeline went to Morocco and got a Toblerone McFlurry and ever since I have always wanted to go to a fast food joint in another country to see what exciting ice cream treats they have on their menu. Also, whenever I teach about globalization, my international students love to tell the American students how different fast food restuarants are in the countries they are from. For example, in many other places, Pizza Hut is a much nicer restaurant than it is in the US. Who knew! So when I spotted a DQ in the student center at the University of Calgary, I knew I would have to check it out. On the last day of the conference, me and a couple of other graduate students decided we needed a break and decided to hang out and get some DQ! This is a small Blizzard, which I think is the absolute best size. Not toe big, not too little. There are one or two sizes smaller and large than this guy.  ...

I'm going to give you a little insight into the life of a graduate student. At 8:30 this past Sunday, my brain was pretty fried from doing work and I was caught up on reviews (for the most part). Basically I had nothing to do. I thought about just going to bed right then and there, but then I remembered I'm 24 years old, not 74. So instead I decided to go to Heyn's by myself, because YOLO. I live a wild life. Heyn's is a pretty small shop and all the seats were full, so I sat outside in the cool weather to eat my ice cream, that's how dedicated I am. I thought the lighting would be bad for pictures, but they turned out great! Well Heyn's was pretty popping, I guess I'm not the only Iowa City resident who decided to go crazy and get some delicious ice cream on a Sunday night. After sampling a couple of flavors I picked Key Lime Pie Cheesecake, which I had never seen offered before, and Chocoholic Delight. The Chocoholic Delight is described as Chocola...

Confession time.  I eat so many Blizzards from Dairy Queen, but I don't always post about them.  The Metro stop near my school is a 2 minute walk from a Dairy Queen, so every time I'm getting off the train at school I stop for a Blizzard.  OBVIOUSLY.  Here is a review of a non-flavor-of-the-month Blizzard from a recent train ride. I had my eye on the Brownie Batter flavor, but when I got up to the counter to order I was struck with indecision.  I confidently said, "I'll have a...." and then trailed off and made a really weird sound of uncertainty.  The guy at the counter laughed.  Then I changed my mind and decided to get a Salted Caramel Truffle Blizzard instead.  This year is Dairy Queen's 75th anniversary, so they re-vamped their Blizzard menu and rolled out a whole line of 'Fanniversary' Blizzard flavors, including the Salted Caramel Truffle. I was expecting vanilla soft serve with salted caramel truffles and maybe caramel swirls, so it w...

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...

I was recently at Target exclusively to pick up ice cream, and decided to make it a coffee themed trip.  I had a pretty good experience with Archer Farms German Chocolate Cake and wanted to try more flavors from this new line, so I picked up Coffee Toffee Crunch. Recently, there was a stir when Ben and Jerry's started using GMO-free toffee instead of Heath Bars in their similar flavor.  We didn't get into blogging quite in time to be on top of this issue, but On Second Scoop covers it well  here .   I bring this up because the new Ben and Jerry's flavor does not use Heath Bars, and the Archer Farms flavor also does not use Heath bars, a fact which will become relevant later.  The short and sweet description of this flavor is Coffee-flavored ice cream with toffee chunks. This ice cream tasted weird.  There's no getting around it and no way to say it nicely, this tasted weird.  The first flavor that hit my tongue was weird plastic-y weirdness. ...

I finally visited  Grand Ole Creamery , a St. Paul ice cream institution!  It's 30 years old and was the first ice cream parlor in St. Paul to serve super-premium ice cream!  I haven't heard much about Grand Ole Creamery, so I didn't really know what to expect. Kyle and I drove over to the St. Paul location on Monday night.  We parked a few blocks away and walked over to the shop. They have a giant ice cream cone for a sign, so there was no missing it, but the door was set back from the sidewalk so I almost walked right by.  The ice cream freezer/display was to the right immediately as you walked in the door.  There was only one other family in line with us, but because the line was so close to the door it felt suuuuuper crowded.  There wasn't a lot of room to wander the counter to look at all the flavors.  I felt too rushed and like I was taking up too much space as I asked to sample a couple flavors.  I could see how this could become an...

Occasionally, I eat food besides ice cream. Hands down, my favorite sandwich shop in St. Louis is Fozzie's Sandwich Emporium. They seriously have the best black bean burger ever. I mean, it is called an Emporium, how could it not be good? Not only do they have great sandwiches and salads, for omnivores, vegetarians, and vegans alike, Fozzies has superb milkshakes. Fozzie's is also a favorite of Madeline and not long ago I found out she had never had a milkshake from Fozzie's! Obviously when she visited St. Louis a few weekends ago, we had to get some milkshakes! Fozzie's standard milkshakes are super awesome. In fact, I am so in love with their Salty Kisses shake I sometimes forget to even look at their specials. When we ate there one of their specials was a Nutty Professor milkshake. As it is my life goal to be a nutty professor, I had to order this milkshake. This milkshake also features blondies. I have a newfound appreciation for blondies after eating Ben & Je...

Not too long ago, I was sent, by my friend Bronwyn, a picture of a pint of Ben & Jerry's called Blondie Ambition. It was an exclusive flavor, and she told me she had gotten it at Target. At first, I was really excited because I thought it was a new flavor. But the more I thought about it, I realized they might have just renamed their Rockin' Blondie flavor. I never want to miss trying a Ben & Herr's flavor, so just to be safe, I purchased a pint. I took the pint over to my old apartment, where my friends Bronwyn and Katy still live, and where we have our Ben & Jerry's tower stored, and compared the descriptions. Alas, the descriptions were the same. They had just renamed this pint. The description of this flavor is Buttery Brown Sugar Ice Cream with Blonde Brownies & Butterscotch Toffee Flakes . By this point in the blog, you may be starting to get to know my ice cream tastes. This is not something I would normally pick up, so I'm glad I kind...

Those of you from St. Louis reading this blog are probably going, "WTF?!?!?!" right about now. Jilly's cupcakes is the premier cupcake place in St. Louis...or Ladue... Their address says St. Louis, but they are close enough to Ladue and the prices of their cupcakes scream "We are catering to rich Ladue and Clayton residents that want to spend too much money on cupcakes!!!" We're talking ~$4.75 a pop. But then again, these babies might just be worth it (and for my Wash U readers, they take bear's bucks!). They are HUGE and the frosting is piled high. There is also some sort of filling, like creme, or jelly, or chocolate, or caramel, in the middle, too. Seriously, these things are great. In fact so great that Jilly's cupcakes won Food Network's Cupcake Wars TWICE! This is the Cuban Coffee cupcake. Description:  Cake: Coffee Chip -- Filling: Coffee Dulce de Leche -- Topping: Espresso Swirl Buttercream, Café con Leche Crunch, Sweet Cuban Coffee S...