Snow Cream

Saturday night we got about 6" of snow. It was our second snowfall of the winter and I really don't mind it all that much. Whenever it snows I can't help but think about making snow cream. As a kid, when it snowed a decent amount, the next best thing to do after riding sleds was to make snow cream... and maybe a batch of no bake cookies to go along with it while we warmed up by playing Monopoly or something like that.

I love snow cream. I don't know that there was an exact recipe for it, we just dumped everything together until it tasted right, but if I had to guess it would be something like this.

A bunch of snow
A cup of sugar
A cup of milk
2 or 3 teaspoons of vanilla

We used a dish pan piled high with snow to make it, so it had to be at least a couple of gallons of snow to start out with. It didn't really matter, because the snow partially melts when you poured the liquid into it. The rest of the ingredients are basically to taste, you play with it until you like it. I've heard some folks use an egg or two, but I'll pass on that. Oh, and obviously the snow had to be clean.

Mom wouldn't let us make it with the first snowfall of the year, but heck, most years we only got one snow, so sometimes we would go 2 or 3 years between batches. I read somewhere that if you wait until after the first 2 or 3 inches of a new snow, and there are no pollution sources nearby, the snow will be clean enough. And of course you have to shy away from where the animals live and feed. You know, as Frank Zappa says, "Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow. " :)

Anyway, one of these days I'm going to make it when the grand kids are around. I think that would be something to pass along to them before the store bought stuff ruins their taste buds. I hear Mayfield's makes a flavor called Snow Cream, but there is no way anything that comes from a plant tastes as good as the fresh snow that came from the field across from the house. Absolutely no way.