It can be hard to be a forager in the winter when everything is covered with snow. The earth is dormant, so there is not much obviously available to eat. The day I stumbled upon Bless This Mess's recipe for snow ice cream, I knew that I had to try it! (Can I also just say how much I love the fact that they have a family cookbook? Definitely something to aspire to leave as a legacy for my own family!)

I still get a little thrill every time I see snowflakes falling. I feel a little like Lorelai from Gilmore Girls: snow is special. The morning my son was born I looked out the window and upon seeing the feathery crystals tumbling out of the clouds I thought 'wouldn't it be lucky for him to be born today'?

Before you start thinking I am too crazy, understand that where I did most of my growing up it barely ever snowed. Sometime - usually in early January - we would get our week of winter and that would be it. There are only a handful of winters in my memory that actually yielded enough snow to be worth mentioning, and that was usually for only one day or so. Now living in Kamloops, the fact that we actually have obvious seasons is refreshing. Although this winter has been particularly snowy - even temperate Vancouver has been covered in white several times - I still think snow is magical, and the idea of making ice cream from it just puts it all over the top.

I have to preface these photos by saying that my snow was not as good as it could have been. It was freshly fallen that morning, but the temperatures warmed up that afternoon and it got a bit of an icy crust on the top. I was wondering if I was going to get a chance to try again with better snow since it was looking like the temperatures were going to continue rising, but as I am typing right now there is a huge storm outside that is set to continue all day tomorrow so it looks like I will get my chance!

For my attempt, I riffed off of the Bless this Mess recipe, but made less since I was only making it for myself. I also only had table cream for my dairy, but I would like to try again with evaporated milk like she did. Regardless, it was actually pretty tasty, even if the texture of mine was a bit more like a vanilla sno-cone than ice cream due to the icy layer that had formed when the sun came out. The dinosaur sprinkles were also obviously 100% necessary.

Is it still snowing where you live? Go out and try this! You'll have a lot of fun.