How in the world can an ice cream stir up such a mixed bag of emotions? That’s what I have been asking myself for the past week as I wrestled with the decision to share this post. I almost didn’t even bother, but it seems so appropriately timed to tonight’s “blue supermoon,” an astronomical phenomenon that we haven’t seen since 2009 and won’t see again until 2037. So, I reasoned, it was now or never.

But oh, the drama! Allow me to explain.

For me personally, a very specific childhood event involving this ice cream dredges up difficult feelings about being gaslighted into becoming a timid kid. I’ll spare you the dreadful details, but in some weird, wishful-thinking way, I thought that revisiting the event by making this ice cream would redeem those feelings. It didn’t, but that is not the ice cream’s fault.

The recipe itself is a bit of an enigma, given that nobody really seems to know for sure what flavors go into blue moon ice cream, and I struggled with my own memory to describe the flavor of it, which is “fruity,” but not specific to a single fruit. Is it raspberry or lemon? Almond or vanilla? In my memory, it tasted like some mashup of bubble gum, cotton candy and tropical fruit punch. Oh, and with pineapple bits. And that’s where this adventure began to go off the rails.

My search for an inspiration recipe for blue moon ice cream turned up massive volumes of  denials of my own memory of it. Nearly every recipe on the internet emphatically declares (often in all caps) that “blue moon DOES NOT contain pineapple!” But here’s the problem— I was there during my childhood and the blue moon ice cream I had most certainly did contain pineapple; in fact, it was the pineapple that I remember most. Lovely little bits of crushed pineapple amid all that artificially teal ice cream base. Another thing that struck me odd about the online recipes I found was that most of them included a package of instant vanilla pudding, which sounds so wrong to me. What would instant pudding add to an ice cream, I wondered, besides more artificial flavoring? Wasn’t the teal blue color artificial enough? My iPhone camera certainly thought so!

The discrepancy of opinion on the flavor of this ice cream, and especially the pineapple,  apparently results from the fact that blue moon originated in the Midwest— Michigan to be specific— and my experiences of it were in upstate New York. What I enjoyed as a kid was obviously an adaptation of the original recipe, but it was still sold as “blue moon.” Was I wrong to enjoy it that way? I can not bear this level of gaslighting.

If the argument around this was not turbulent enough, I also had the unfortunate experience of damaging my fancy new French-made food processor in the making of my blue moon ice cream. As I have done many times before, I used my processor to pulse partially frozen pineapple into smaller chunks, and this was to be mixed into the blue base at the end of churning in my ice cream freezer. But something went terribly wrong, and my processor is currently on a UPS truck, headed to the service center for a warranty repair. Was this the universe’s way of confirming that pineapple is NOT meant to be in blue moon ice cream? Good golly, what chaos! 

After all my tinkering with the raspberry, vanilla, lemon and almond, plus the addition of the pineapple, I’m still not sure I got it right (Les disliked it so much, he didn’t even finish a serving of it). Perhaps the proof is in the pudding, but I have neither the time nor the motivation to make blue moon ice cream again right away. At the end of this ridiculous string of events, I decided that it was at least worth sharing because it does move an item to the done column of my culinary bucket list, and just in time for tonight’s blue supermoon.  Blue moon ice cream is now completed, and even though I didn’t particularly appreciate the resulting flavor, I did learn an important lesson, which can be summed up in a line from a Don Henley tune:

Out on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A little voice inside my head said, “don’t look back, you can never look back.

---

Don Henley ~ “The Boys of Summer”

I wish I had left blue moon ice cream in my memories, where it still held mystery and intrigue. It could be that 11-year old Terrie enjoyed it just because it was different from the mint chocolate chip ice cream that everyone else my age was screaming for that summer. I probably should have followed my own advice about recipes and disregarded the “alternate facts” presented by so many others on the internet regarding the pineapple. Finally, if I hadn’t pushed so hard to make sense of the whole thing, I could be making hummus or spiralizing zucchini or pureeing fresh tomatoes into gazpacho today. Instead, I’m checking the UPS tracking to be sure my food processor arrives at the warranty service center in one piece. I hope it get it back in time for Thanksgiving.

As for the blue supermoon, I wanted to be excited about it as well. Supermoons are fairly common during the summer, but the odds of a blue moon (second full moon during a single month) also being a supermoon (appearing closer and larger than usual) are extraordinary. The blue supermoon will be a spectacle to behold, beginning after 9pm ET tonight. But I learned today that this supermoon— which is expected to exaggerate high tide— will likely wreak additional havoc on the gulf coast of Florida, where folks are already underwater from Hurricane Idalia.

At least I know my ice cream didn’t cause that.

For those of you wishing to recreate this astronomical mishap, here’s an easy, click-to-print recipe for you. Pineapple, of course, is optional. 😉

Blue Moon Ice Cream (WITH pineapple)

• Servings: About 8
• Prep Time: 15 minutes, plus chilling and churning
• Cook Time: None
• Difficulty: Average
• Print

This recipe is my best effort at recreating a childhood favorite. Adjust the flavors to your liking, and decide for yourself whether to add the pineapple.

Ingredients

• 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk (regular or fat free is fine)
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 1/2 tsp. almond extract
• 1 1/2 tsp. raspberry extract
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp. pure lemon oil
• 1/8 tsp. Fiori di Sicilia extract (optional, and probably redundant to the lemon and vanilla)
• 2 Tbsp. cream of coconut (for extra sweetness)
• 1/2 tsp. blue food coloring gel (this is more concentrated than liquid colorant)
• 1/2 cup pineapple tidbits (added during final few minutes of churning)

Most recipes for the “Midwest” version of blue moon ice cream do not include the pineapple, so adding them is entirely up to you. The ice cream I knew and loved from my childhood in Western N.Y. included pineapple, so my nostalgia required it. 😉

Directions

1. Combine condensed milk, whole milk and heavy cream in a large mixing bowl or pitcher.
2. Stir in extracts, a little at a time if you wish, and adjust flavors to taste. Stir in food coloring gel. Refrigerate until base is completely chilled.
3. Freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions, adding partially frozen pineapple bits during the final few minutes.
4. Transfer to an insulated ice cream container and freeze several hours to overnight, until firm.