Snow Ice Cream

After a few cups of much-needed coffee, I decided it was time for the snow day tradition of making snow ice cream. If you've never made snow ice cream before, you should try it today. Here's how.

Step 1: Wait for it to snow. This is the most important (and challenging) step. You can try to cheat and use shaved ice or your Snoopy Snow Cone Maker, but it's just not the same. Snow ice cream is one of those things that flies in the face of our instant gratification, consumer-driven culture, and that my friend, is the beauty of it. (That, and lots of cream and sugar.)

Step 2: Put out a bowl to catch clean snow.

Step 3: Mix up your ingredients. I used 2% milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. You can also use whole milk or evaporated milk, but you want to stay away from skim milk. This is not a diet food. Mix it all up and fiddle with the ingredients until it tastes good. The more snow you have, the more stuff you need. It's not an exact science.


Step 4: Pour the milk mixture over the ice cream and mix it up. You don't have to use all of the snow.

Step 5: Serve and enjoy. I am a snow ice cream purist, so I believe it is wrong to add such distractions as hot fudge or chocolate sauce, but how you live your life is none of my business.

Now, the downside to this tradition is that my husband is asleep on the couch, Ella is sitting in her closet crying because she can't find the appropriate outfit for eating snow ice cream, and the baby is too young for dairy (and even I'm not crunchy enough to make her breast milk snow ice cream). So I am enjoying the snow ice cream alone, which kind of takes away from that whole family togetherness thing. Oh, well. More for me.