After one of our big snows this year,I decided to make snow ice cream while the snow was still fresh.
When I was in preschool, I remember doing an experiment where we let snow melt and then evaporate and took turns looking at what was left behind. It was sort of gross, but it never deterred me from catching snowflakes on my tongue.
On a perfect snowy day when the house was full of people, it was time. I asked my eager young friend to go out and gather me a bucket full of clean snow. The snow that day was a little wet and heavy, but was the sort of snow that you just want to put your face into. (There may have been two buckets of snow that came into the house, one of which may have been used for some people’s face prints.)
When a recipe is mere suggestion of ingredients that should be mixed together until the desired stage is reached, you start off slowly. Judging from the amount of snow, I started with a cup of sugar. I took out the wooden spoon my husband got me for Christmas and began to stir. With the snow as wet and heavy as it was, it took more effort than I expected.
I added milk and vanilla.
I stirred.
And then I tasted. It tasted like sweet snow and nothing like ice cream.
I added more milk, more vanilla, more sugar, and stirred.
It was not creamy yet. But it tasted more like I would expect.
We’ll call this the Agile method of making snow ice cream. I bet that would make my boss happy. An adaptive, iterative approach. I had some of my stakeholders test my prototype. The amount of sugar and the amount of vanilla was good, but the texture wasn’t quite creamy enough.
I added more milk, but it was becoming a bit of a melty mess. I threw it in the freezer to reharden.
When it came out, I scooped it into a fancy crystal dish to admire the rich, creamy color. I brought out spoons and we all dug in to take a bite (except for my friend that doesn’t eat snow because the crystals form around dust particles). It was delicious. I poured a bit of my homemade pear caramel on top and took another bite.
Snow ice cream is more like ice milk than actual ice cream. There is no denying that the base of it is snow and not custard. The kids loved it. I thought having an entire gallon of it was a bit excessive.
All in all, it was a fun experiment, but not necessarily worth repeating.
Snow Ice Cream
Ingredients
- 1 Gallon Snow
- Granulated Sugar to taste
- Milk to taste
- vanilla to taste
Instructions
- Start with a gallon of fresh snow. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of snow and stir. Add a milk, more sugar, and vanilla a little at a time. Continue to stir until it has the texture and flavor of ice cream.
Notes
If you like this recipe, check out some more: Any Flavor (Raspberry)Pastel Party Pie, Groovy Teen Bars, and Delightful Danish Pastry
When I was little, my mother tried a similar recipe. We kids thought it was terrific and such a novelty! But I remember my mother wasn’t so keen to try it again…
Yeah…it was fun once.