Our First Snow Cream!

We woke up to a blanket of white this morning, which came as a complete surprise to me.  (I guess I should check the weather reports more often. ;))  Frankly, I quickly became busy with my day and somewhat forgot about our recent accumulation outside.  (Priorities- sheesh!)

My lovely daughter snapped me back to reality, though, just in time for us to catch a little excitement outside before it all became puddles on the ground.  We had a marvelous time and I thank the LORD for the experience and the opportunity to savor these fleeting moments. 

While watching my curiously dressed children making snow angels, enjoying snowball fights, and picking icicles off the picnic tables, I remembered how some friends of mine had talked recently about making snow cream and were even hoping for another opportunity to make some.  I had never made snow cream until today (gasp!  shocking, I know) and was looking forward to my first attempt. :)

Older brother is around here somewhere making snowballs to throw at unsuspecting siblings. ;)

There he is!  Oops!  He's been finding icicles!

I love ice cream.  I do mean love and it doesn't really matter what kind it is either, although chocolate varieties are my decided favorite.  I even tried bacon-flavored once and it was still good!  I can't imagine what life was like before this invention, can you?  So, naturally the idea of making something similar from snow was very appealing to me. :o)

I did a quick search online to see what we would need.  Snow- check! (at least for the next 20 minutes or so), milk of any kind- check!, sugar- check! (as if we wouldn't have that in this house!), extract- check!  Then, I grabbed a ladle and a mixing bowl and went to work gathering undisturbed, "unmuddied", and perfectly beautiful white stuff!  (8 cups to be exact)

By this time, the kids were ready to thaw out so we took our treasure indoors and went to work.  We just happened to have some left over sweetened condensed milk in the refrigerator and I could think of no better kind of milk for making snow cream!  With the help of my littles, we added that.  The milk was so sweet that we didn't even need to add any of our dearly loved sugar to the concoction. 

Believe it or not, the spanish version is less expensive...and the exact same thing!

Next came the extract.  The recipe suggested vanilla but also mentioned that you could use any kind you wanted.  Since we received a bottle of rum extract in our stocking over Christmas, I thought this was as good a time as any to use it.  (Don't worry.  It's imitation. ;))

Mix it all together and voila!  We were done. :D

My happy helper. :)  Don't look too closely at the photo.  If I waited until my home was perfectly clean to take pictures, they would never happen!

Yummy, goodness!

I cannot overemphasize the amount of childlike excitement that flooded my heart while making and eating this new treat.  Honestly, I think I enjoyed the experience even more than the kids did.  How is it that I waited nearly 37 years before ever trying this?  So delicious!  (Probably has something to do with growing up in the South, ya know, where a primary ingredient is a rare commodity. ;)) But next time, I'm using vanilla.  The rum just didn't produce the flavor I expected...a little on the strong side.  You can find the recipe here, same link as posted above.