What To Do With All This Snow...

I cooked!  Nah, just kidding.  I did no such thing.  Gotcha!

But I did make SNOW ICE CREAM!

Just as I was beginning to think that winter and its accompanying snow had no redeeming value, I stumbled upon snow ice cream.  Apparently, people have been making 'ice cream' from snow for ages.  I've recently seen Instagram pics, Pinterest recipes and even heard about it in real life from someone just this week.  Since I grew up in the snowy depths of Pennsylvania, I almost feel like I missed out on an important rite of passage as a child.  Nah, not really.  However, I was so intrigued that I  had to see for myself what all the fuss was about.  Also, the Northeast has been pummeled by snow this week and I couldn't think of anything better to do with the mounds of it on my balcony.

So, I headed on over to Pinterest to see how exactly to go about this little project.  Oh my, there are pins upon pins for this stuff.  Here are a couple I referenced:

via bargainbriana.com

 

via madamedeals.com

 

 

Suddenly I felt like the only human on the planet who has never made snow ice cream.  In any case, it turns out you need very few ingredients to make this little treat.  All of the recipes call for the same 3 basic ingredients: some kind of milk, vanilla extract and sugar (in addition to your pure virgin snow).

Also, many of the instructions made sure to specify that you should be using clean snow free of debris, animal trackings, and/or yellow discoloration.  I enjoyed those comments just a little too much.  I mean, if they hadn't specifically told me, I was planning on just hopping out of my car while driving down the freeway and scooping some black trodden muck from the side of the road.  Thank goodness for explicit instructions.

Without further ado, let's begin.

Step 1:  Grab some kind of vessel and a large spoon and head into the great outdoors to fill that vessel full of white fluffy snow.  (I used an 8 cup Glad food storage container.)

 

 

 

 

Step 2:  Add in your milk.  Some recipes called for sweetened condensed milk, and some just used regular ol' cow's milk.  Anti-lactose girl over here used unsweetened almond milk.  The amounts varied depending on the amount of snow you have, but I used 1 cup. 

Step 3:  Add the vanilla extract.  I used 1 teaspoon.

 

 

Step 4 (Optional):  Add sugar.  I was actually going to skip this step because I didn't want the added sugar, however I tasted my concoction after having added the almond milk and vanilla and it was very bland.  This was probably because I used unsweetened almond milk.  If you're going dairy and you used sweetened condensed milk, I think you could probably skip the sugar.  I added a 1/4 cup of sugar and tasted it.  Holy sweetness!  So back out I went on the deck to scoop up some more snow for dilution.

 

 

 

Step 5:  Eat & enjoy!  Behold my final product:

 

 

 

 

Verdict:  This stuff in no way tastes like ice cream, but that could be due in part to the fact that I didn't use condensed or dairy milk in my recipe.  It wasn't the best thing I ever ate, but I give it high scores for being a novelty.  And it actually tastes pretty similar to vanilla flavored Italian ice.  Have any of you ever had that?  It reminds me of Rita's vanilla Italian ice, if you have those shops in your neck of the woods.

 

This snow cream has no nutritional value to speak of, unless we're talking the water content for hydration, but if I had kids I would LOVE to make this with them! In fact, if I knew about this at Christmastime I would have made some with my niece and nephews.  Live and learn. 

 

If you are currently being slammed with snow, give it a whirl.  Um, just remember to scoop up clean snow people :)

 

 

 

Have you ever made snow cream?!

 

Please tell me I'm not the only one whose childhood was devoid of this little winter secret.