Snow Cream
A few years ago, I was watching the snow come down and remembered making “ice cream” out of snow once as a child. I decided to invite some family members over and try our hands at “snow cream.” Since then, I’ve played around with this idea quite a bit, and today my 2-year-old daughter and I made something that didn’t resemble the texture of ice cream at all, but was pretty tasty and was really fun for my cute girl to help with. The texture reminded me of melted ice cream mixed with little shaved ice chunks, and was kind of fun. We will definitely be doing it again.
I started with a can of sweetened condensed milk, stirred together with about 8 cups of clean snow. If you have some forethought, it’s a great idea to put a bowl outside and let it fill with snow as it comes down. However, if you’re a bit more sporadic, like me, just scoop up some fresh snow, making sure not to collect any that has come in contact with the ground or contaminates (car exhaust, etc.).
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The milk and snow mixture is your base, and you can add whatever you’d like from there. You can keep it simple and just add a bit of vanilla extract, or you can add lots of mix-ins and flavorings. We had bananas that were getting overripe, so we mashed them with a fork and stirred them in with almond extract and slivered almonds. In my daughter’s bowl, I also added a few chocolate chips and some sprinkles for fun. I imagine it would also be good with peanut butter, candy chunks or chopped up candy bars. Be aware that it is pretty runny though, so mix-ins like chocolate syrup will make it even less solid.
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Snow Cream
8 cups fresh, clean snow
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 bananas, mashed
½ teaspoon almond extract
1/3 cup slivered almonds
Mix, serve and enjoy!
