Ronnie Deedy inspects a batch of peach pops he’s just pulled from a special machine that freezes the pops in 15 minutes.
Reminder Publishing photo by Cliff Clark
SOUTHWICK — For years, Moolicious has been pushing the ice-cream making envelope coming up with sweet delights like the Moo-nut, the Cornbread Sundae, and flavors like Pancakes and Syrup, Blueberry Buckle and Coffee Mud Pie, and this year, its adding to its dozens of choices the Ronnie Pop, the ice cream shop’s take on the popsicle.
The Ronnie of Ronnie Pops is Ronnie Deedy — the son of Moolicious’ owner Joseph Deedy — who had been thinking for some time about creating a “clean” popsicle, with no artificial colors or flavors, and because his children, Madison and Ronnie Jr., love them.
“We were buying a lot of pops for them, so we just started researching,” Ronnie said while standing inside the Moolicious creamery where all the magic happens.
That research took nearly nine months and included buying a machine designed to make ice pops, which was not inexpensive, and learning the process of blending the right ingredients to create a pop that was not too hard, or too soft, and could be easily packaged for sale.
When experimenting with the recipes, Ronnie, with help from his dad, figured out the correct proportions needed to make the perfect pop using only natural ingredients, but it wasn’t as easy as one might think.
“We had lots of trial and error … and lots of error,” Ronnie said with a chuckle.
Not only were Ronnie and Joseph learning how to make an ice pop, they were also learning how to create a fudge pop.
“They’re two different worlds … one’s milk and one’s water,” Joseph said.
That involved much more trial and error.
The first iterations were too soft. Other versions were too sticky to package, and there was always the challenge of making sure the fudge pops didn’t develop ice crystals.
“You want a smooth texture without crystals,” Ronnie said.
They’ve also been experimenting with different ingredients to add to the fudge pops.
When trying to add marshmallow to the fudge, the pops came out too sticky.
So, they both put on their thinking caps, and like many of the exotic ice creams Moolicious offers — like its banana pudding flavor uses roasted bananas — they came up with a solution: roasting the marshmallows.
“It was just what we were trying for,” Joseph said.
The crunchy blackened sugar combined with the melted marshmallow center added to the Dutch chocolate fudge recipe was perfect, they said.
Joseph said it might be called the campfire fudge pop.
They’re still working on getting the proportions right for the peanut butter fudge pop.
The first version was way too peanut buttery, as this reporter can attest to.
Biting into the pop, the creamy chocolate is the first taste you notice, but then the peanut butter flavor overwhelms.
“If you really like peanut butter, you’ll like this,” Joseph said, laughing.
He said the next batch would use a bit less of the peanut butter, which is organic and contains one ingredient — peanuts, no salt, sugar, dairy, or soy.
And these pops are made in small batches, by hand.
Ronnie mixes organic sugar, with pureed fruits like peaches, blueberries, and strawberries, and curcumin, derivative of the spice turmeric, for the color.
“This is as real as it gets. This is real fruit,” Ronnie said while stirring a batch of syrup for peach pops.
The liquid is then poured into molds, the sticks are held in another device, and everything is dipped in the specialized machine to freeze, which takes about 15 minutes.
Even with everything done by hand, Ronnie said he can produce between 200 and 300 pops an hour.
But it doesn’t stop there. Each pop is inserted into a paper wrapper — all by hand.
Right now, he’s working with Ronnie Jr., 9 months, and Madison, who is 3, to help with finding the right combinations of flavors to create more interesting flavors for the pops.
“Ronnie Jr. is in charge of the taste testing and Madison is in charge of the recipes,” Ronnie said while the two, with mom Emily standing by, tried a lemon and fudge pop.
The pop flavors include lemon, pineapple, blueberry, raspberry, strawberry, the triple flavored red, white and blueberry, coffee granada and root beer.
The pops can be found at Moolicious, located at 258 Feeding Hills Rd., where they can be bought individually or in boxes or six or 12.
