One treat that regularly inhabited the freezers of my youth was the hallowed Jell-O pudding pop. These days, it’s hard to say “Jell-O pudding pop” without conjuring up an unsavory image of a genteel TV doctor gone bad. Maybe that’s why Jell-O let Gen X’s favorite vanilla and chocolate desserts-on-a-stick go gently into that good night.
Sometimes, when retro culture makes a forceful resurfacing, I look them up on the internet to see if anyone has resuscitated my favorite old thing. Alas. Little Debbie’s Cosmic Brownies came back, as did Planter’s cheese balls. But those pudding pops? No such luck. (Jell-O does sell DIY kits.)
Isolating at home during the pandemic offered ample time for re-creating ’80s favorites. One sunny afternoon, I made a batch of homemade vanilla pudding and froze it into ice pop molds and envisioned a much younger version of myself: craving sated.
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As it turns out, the re-creation of an old favorite was only a jumping-off point. Another point of nostalgia (I love Don Draper’s description of that feeling in “Mad Men”: the pain from an old wound) was the rocket pop, the red, white and blue ice pop procured, most often, from an ice cream truck.
I grew up in two places, first in New York City and, later, in suburban Massachusetts. In the former, the music from the truck blended in with the city’s many other sounds. To hear it was to know the nearing of respite from the smothering heat of summer in a city. In the latter, an ice cream truck signified some kind of communal event. People poured out of their houses, onto wide streets, where cars kind of lumbered. In small towns, time stops in summer. It’s not at all like life in a city.
A rocket pop drips down the arm. By the time you reach the bottom — the blue — on a hot summer day, it may be entirely gone, the victim of July’s scorching heat. Such is not true with the recipe I developed, where smashed raspberries take the place of the rocket’s red top, vanilla pudding stands in for the traditional lemon center, and cooked blueberries (here, tinged with lemon, too) anchor the bottom for a solid purplish blue.
I make these in paper cups, not in molds. They are substantial, large pops that marry two of my favorite childhood flavors; they work together, physically and on the palate. They are a little icy, and a little creamy. Fruity, and bright and sweet.
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Will they run down your arm? Surely any July sun will cause them to melt. But there is no danger of losing the precious bottom layer if you eat slowly.
Because these pops must be frozen in layers, you can save a little time and labor by making the three elements in advance. The raspberry smash takes but a few minutes and a fork. The blueberry compote is a five-minute affair, plus time to cool.
The vanilla pudding, the most complicated element of this recipe, is mostly a matter of attention-paying and stirring. It’s a basic custard, but, because of its strong ratio of eggs to cornstarch, it’s also the kind of recipe that shrugs off curdling (although there’s a step in here that protects against the errant curdle, should you accidentally take things too far: a sieve). Make the pudding as far as two days ahead of time and hold it in the fridge with wax paper or plastic wrap pressed directly on the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming until you’re ready to assemble the pops.
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The rocket pops themselves can hold for up to a week in the freezer. So, you can make them in advance for Fourth of July gatherings. And, when the guests arrive, surprise them with these most festive of treats, served extra cold and dislodged from their cups at the very last minute.
It’s a way to make new memories. I like to think that, years from now, friends and family will remember my own pops with fondness, the way I remember the freezer treats of my own youth.
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