Once Upon a Midnight Dreary: The Edgar Allan Poe Collection

At midnight, ordinary things take on a second life.

A curtain stirred by the wind becomes a warning. A knock at the door must be an intruder. Dying embers cast ghosts upon the floor.

Poe was a master of transformations. He begins with recognizable places and objects, then uses grief, obsession and imagination to morph them into something different. Something slightly unnerving. Something mysterious. 

Our Edgar Allan Poe ice cream collection begins with the question: what might the familiar become after midnight?  

It is a lonely, bleak December night. Our narrator is restless and up late reading, throwing himself into stories to escape his reality of sorrow and yearning for the late Lenore. The silence in the room is interrupted by a tapping.

When he opens the window, a raven enters and perches above the chamber door, staring. Our narrator begins asking the raven questions, though deep down he already knows the answers. He asks still, taunting himself with the hope that the answer might be brighter while knowing that it could never be.

That transformation from familiar to unknowable is where our Raven flavor begins. It starts with the memory of a blueberry muffin warm from the oven. Except now, that signature sweetness and wheaty flavor zap your tongue as a frozen delight. 

This ice cream flavor carries the buttery, caramelized sweetness of a freshly baked good while a deep blueberry swirl winds through the blue like ink across a page. Something recognizable has entered the chamber as mystery lingers in the shadows.  

The hour is late, and the fire is fading. Our narrator is tired but unable to rest, suspended between the nightmare of reality and the bliss of a daydream.

Midnight Dreary draws its character from that opening scene. Midnight dark chocolate envelops all, dense with bittersweet cocoa, except for ribbons of raspberry jam that disrupt the darkness with a sudden, bright fruitfulness.

The two flavors pull against each other. The chocolate is deep and lingering while the raspberry is tart and sudden. Their contrast recalls the poem's central tension, where reason yields to desperation.

By the end of the poem, the raven has become a prophet and a "thing of evil." Despite the demands to reveal what lies beyond the grief, the raven remains unmoved by the increasingly frantic questioning. 

Thing of Evil takes its form from that moment of unraveling.

The flavor begins with a naturally purple coconut base, an uncanny color for something built from familiar ingredients, and crumbles of chocolate sandwich cookies scattered throughout. Caramel brings a deep, toasted sweetness, while miso moves quietly beneath it with a savory salinity. At first, it resembles cookies and cream. Then the miso appears, deepening the caramel and reshaping the sweetness. Like the raven itself, the thing has brought something unexpected into the room. 

The answer from the raven never changes. 

Questions originating from curiosity, hope and anguish all receive the same response: Nevermore. What first seems to be a cruel trick becomes a final verdict. 

NevermOrange contrasts the solemn refrain with an unexpected twist. It recalls the moment when the strange ebony bird beguiles the narrator's sadness into a smile. 

Blood orange gives the ice cream a deep citrus flavor while olive oil softens its sharper edges and lends the scoop a silky finish. Together, they create an elevated dreamsicle, recognizable in spirit but more complex than memory preserved it.

It offers a cheerful interruption to the dead of night.  

Poe rarely depended on monsters in the conventional sense. His most enduring horrors often came from within: a memory that could not be quieted, guilt that refused to remain hidden, or grief that gradually altered the world around it.

Perhaps that is why his work still feels so immediate. Beneath the dark houses, sealed chambers, and flickering firelight are recognizable human fears. We know what it is to remember something differently at midnight, or how silence can grow louder the longer we listen.

The Edgar Allan Poe Collection follows the trail of those transformations. A baked comfort turns impossibly cold. Raspberry cuts through chocolate like a sudden interruption. A childhood favorite takes on a sharper edge. And a cookie is speared with a savory secret.

Each began as something familiar. Then came a tapping.

The Edgar Allan Poe collection is available September 9 at all Clementine's parlors while supplies last.