Krazy Kookie Dough came into Rebecca Muehl’s life when she needed it most. It was the summer of 2020—the height of Texas’s second COVID wave. Pregnant with her first child, the San Antonio office assistant was overcome with strange new cravings, but felt too scared to risk a trip to the grocery store. When she simply couldn’t take it anymore, she sent her husband off to Walgreens, telling him not to return without ice cream. He brought back Krazy Kookie Dough, a seasonal Blue Bell flavor first introduced in 2013, because “artificially flavored cake batter ice cream with sugar cookie dough pieces” was the only description that sounded good to his pregnant wife when he read the label to her over the phone. She was an immediate convert. “It was the best ice cream I have ever had,” Muehl told me, waxing lovingly about the buttery texture (“which sounds gross in ice cream, but isn’t!”) and the cookie dough pieces that taste like Lucky Charms marshmallows. Needless to say, the ice cream didn’t stay in their freezer for long. And that was unfortunate, because when that pint ran out, it was almost a year before Muehl could get her hands on another one. 

Every Blue Bell fan has “the one that got away,” a single seasonal flavor that you fall head over heels in love with, only to be forced to say goodbye to when the limited run came to its inevitable end. For me, there was Chocolate Covered Strawberries, a perfect blend of homemade vanilla, real strawberries, fudge swirl, and chocolate strawberry cordials. I bought it on a whim around Valentine’s Day 2013 and have not seen it since. For you it may be Peaches and Homemade Vanilla. Others may yearn for Groom’s Cake. This experience is a rite of passage that all Texan ice cream fans must go through. It teaches us about impermanence and the value of appreciating what you have when you have it. It teaches us about acceptance too, and how to identify the things we can and cannot change. After all, the whims of the Blue Bell executives who decide what stays on the shelves and what doesn’t are entirely out of our control. 

But Rebecca Muehl didn’t see it that way. Muehl didn’t just lie down and accept Krazy Kookie Dough’s absence in her life. She searched for it for months to no avail, scouring her local H-E-Bs and corner stores. Muehl even went so far as to email Blue Bell and ask about the flavor’s return. She didn’t learn much, only that it would come back in the summer of 2021. But when Muehl finally found it in stores in mid-July, there was only one carton left on the shelf. “I was so happy to finally be eating it, but I was already sad about when it was going to run out,” she says. Her husband suggested she start an online petition to persuade Blue Bell to make Krazy Kookie Dough a year-round flavor. “It was almost as a joke, but I thought, ‘You know, why not? What have I got to lose?’” 

So Muehl made an impassioned plea on Change.org. “I’m sick of rocky road, and cherry garcia. I’m sick and tired of the cookies and cream and cheesecake flavors,” she wrote. “Krazy Kookie Dough is the most unique and wonderful ice cream flavor. Don’t believe me? Try it for yourself. But act quick! It’s only here for a little while. But WE CAN CHANGE THAT,” she added, with inspirational fervor. 

She posted her petition to Reddit, a website she rarely uses, because she wanted to get the word out. Muehl spread the word on local channels, like r/sanantonio and r/texas, but also appealed to broader groups. “Fellow Ice Cream Lovers, I CALL UPON YOU FOR HELP,” she posted in r/icecream. “I figured the post would get taken down or voted to the very bottom, but people have been really responsive,” Muehl says. “A lot of people responded with their own favorite flavors,” such as Buttered Nut and the iconic Peppermint, a holiday offering.

Muehl won over Texans who hadn’t tried Krazy Kookie Dough, and some of them didn’t even seem to want to. They merely admire her gumption. “Don’t care about the ice cream but I like [it] when someone follows their goals,” wrote one user. “You absolute maniac. Signed it,” wrote another. Even a Redditor who claimed that H-E-B Creamy Creations is a better ice cream brand proudly announced that he or she was the petition’s forth-eighth signature. 

As of Friday afternoon, Muehl’s petition had more than eight hundred signatures. She doesn’t know if it will work, but she did speak with someone at Blue Bell who encouraged her not to give up on her dream. “They told me that they would legitimately consider making Krazy Kookie Dough a year round flavor if I got ‘enough signatures.’ They wouldn’t give me a specific amount,” Muehl wrote in a follow-up post.

“We take consumer ideas seriously,” wrote Blue Bell representative Shelby Smith in an email to Texas Monthly. “We wish we could make more flavors and products, but we are limited by a number of factors, including the amount of display space we are allowed in stores.” Smith noted that Krazy Kookie Dough will be on shelves for the next six months or so. Muehl is heartened by the response: “I don’t know if they’re just humoring me to get some free publicity, but they’ve given me hope!”

And therein lies the true beauty of Muehl’s effort: it gives us hope. We all need that, now more than ever. The last year and a half has been tough, and we find ourselves in deeply polarizing times. But no matter how you feel about artificially flavored cookie dough ice cream, whether or not you even like the oddly crunchy texture and oppressive sweetness of Lucky Charms marshmallows, we can all be moved by one woman’s fight to preserve the thing she loves. We can all rally behind a lone individual facing off against a huge organization, harnessing the power of the people to overcome the obstacles in her path. If we can make Krazy Kookie Dough a year-round flavor, we can move mountains.