Craving pumpkin spice? Try an ‘ice lolly’

While we were still enjoying prime-time summer weather at the beach, “pumpkin spice season” sneaked up on us…once again. 

All Dunkin’ Donuts locations in the United States introduce the company’s “fall menu favorites” Aug. 18, and the tagline is: “All in on Pumpkin.” 

When it’s still too hot outside to savor a pumpkin spice flavored latte, you can still “participate in the orangeness of it all” by enjoying a cool and refreshing pumpkin spice popsicle. 

(Technically, “Popsicle” is brand name and registered trademark owned by Unilever, which is resisting the genericization of the term.) 

So, the proper term to use is “ice pop.” In the British Isles, an ice treat on a stick is known as an “ice lolly.” That has a happy ring to it, wouldn’t you say?

Make a batch yourself. It’s easy as pie, says Makinze Gore, associate food editor at Delish.com, a unit of Hearst Digital Media. 

There are only five ingredients. Start with a 15-ounce can pumpkin pureé. Add: 1 cup cold coffee, 3/4 cup heavy cream, 3 tablespoons of honey and 1 teaspoon of pumpkin spice. Whisk and pour into popsicle molds. Place lid on and insert popsicle sticks. Freeze until solid, at least 4 hours. 

Apparently, it’s OK to use popsicle as an adjective. Good grief. 

Ice pops are an American food. They were “invented” by Frank Epperson, an 11-year-old boy living in Oakland, Calif., in 1905. The lad “mixed some soda powder and water in a glass with a small wooden stirrer, but wandered off and forgot about his drink,” according to Mary Bellis of ThoughtCo, a member of the Dotdash publishing family. 

The temperature dipped bellowing freezing, and the next morning, Epperson discovered that his drink was frozen solid. Bellis said: “The boy named the treat an “Epsicle” – because it reminded him of an icicle.” 

In 1923, as an adult, Epperson obtained a patent for his “frozen ice on a stick.” One of his children suggested the product be named as a “Popsicle,” and so it was. 

In 1925, Epperson sold the Popsicle patent to the Joe Lowe Corporation of New York City, the nation’s largest purveyor of ingredient supplies to the ice cream industry. Matt Blitz of Food & Wine magazine said Joe Lowe “had the right infrastructure in place to make Popsicle huge.”

“Popsicle became a frozen empire. The company upped production and began pumping out Popsicles, changing its name to the Popsicle Corporation,” Blitz wrote. 

An early innovation was adding a second stick to the Popsicle, so the treat could be broken in half and shared with a friend. It took practice to learn how to crack it just right to produce two equal portions.

Common fruity flavors were peach, banana, lemon-lime, grape, cherry, orange, pina-colada, blue punch, green apple, strawberry, watermelon and mango. The favorite has always been cherry. 

Over time, new products were introduced, such as the “Fudgsicle,” the “Creamsicle,” the “Dreamsicle” and the “Yosicle.”

 

A Creamsicle is made with ice cream, while a Dreamsicle is made with ice milk. The original coating was a layer of orange sherbet, but other flavors were added, including blue raspberry, lime, grape and blueberry. (Unilever acquired the Popsicle brand in 1989.)

 You can find pumpkin spice latte ice cream in the frozen foods section of the supermarket. Dreyer’s and Edy’s (Ee-Dee’s) brands offer coffee ice cream swirled with pumpkin ice cream. (Owned by Nestlé, they are exactly the same. Dreyer’s is found in the West and Edy’s is in the East.) 

The names refer to the original founders, William Dreyer and Joseph Edy, who started their ice cream company in 1928 in Oakland, Calif.