When life gives you snow...

I found myself faced with a dilemma this week. I was supposed to find a cool restaurant, eat there, write about it, but I'm snowed in, and even if I could drive downtown, most places aren't open anyway, and it's Snowmaggedon everywhere. It's all just too much. So I took a deep breath, looked outside and decided to make do with what I had.

In that spirit, I tried three different snow recipes so I could share the results with you. Restaurants will be there after the snow is gone, and this is a rare opportunity. Let's make the best of it!

Snow Ice Cream

Snow ice cream, complete with sprinkles, creamy and sweet.Submitted by Rebecca LaClair

• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 pinch salt
• 8 cups clean snow
• optional sprinkles

Whisk the milk, sugar, vanilla and salt together. Stir in snow, a little at a time, until you have a creamy, not runny, consistency. Eat immediately.

I'd never tried this before, and I was surprised at how close to ice cream this really was. Okay, that was the easy one. Let's get to some odd snow recipes.

Maple Snow Candy

Maple snow candy, chewy and delicious, just like "Little House on the Prairie."Submitted by Rebecca LaClair

• 1 cup of pure maple syrup
• 1 cookie sheet full of pressed clean snow

When I was little, I was fascinated by Little House on the Prairie. You, too, can become Laura Ingalls Wilder by making these sweet syrup treats, just like her family did. First, take a large cookie sheet and fill it with snow. Pack the snow down hard, and fill and pack again until needed until the entire sheet is full of packed snow. I left mine outside on the porch until I needed it. Next, heat your pure maple syrup in a small saucepan. It needs to be just 100% maple syrup, nothing else will work. Use a candy thermometer and heat the syrup to between 235 to 245 degrees F. Take the pan off of the heat and pour in small strips onto the snowy cookie sheet. Careful, that syrup is super hot! After a few seconds, you can peel off the sticky strips and pop them in your mouth, or roll them around a Popsicle stick for a neater treat.

One cup of syrup makes a lot of candy, so unless you are feeding a bunch of people, opt for a smaller amount.

This candy has to be eaten immediately, and it is wonderfully transitory. Once the snow starts to melt, this candy will dissolve away to nothing, just like snow in the summer. A wonderful, chewy, homemade maple treat.

Snow Pancakes

• 1 ½ cups of flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 1 apple, peeled and grated
• 1 quart bowl of snow
• 2 tablespoons of oil for cooking

Whisk flour and salt together. Beat the egg until fluffy and add milk and grated apple. Combine the flour and egg mixture and stir until just combined. Batter is thick at this point. Preheat pan with oil and wait until a drop of water will sizzle as soon as dropped into the pan. Divide your batter into three equal parts. With each part, stir in two rounded tablespoons of snow (or more, it's not an exact science) then pour into pan immediately. Cook pancakes until golden brown, turning once.

This is an old recipe, and I found it fascinating. It originally showed up in Miss Parloa's New Cook Book: A Guide to Marketing and Cooking published in 1880. The point to using the snow is that it will turn to steam and fluff the pancakes up during cooking.

With that in mind, I must have done something wrong. My pancakes were dense and chewy, but I am so on board with the idea of putting grated apple into pancake batter. When I cooked the last two batches, I also added some cinnamon, which was amazing. We were out of syrup because I had used all of mine on the aforementioned maple snow candy, so we spread butter and jelly on them like heathens. They were delicious, but not light and fluffy.

Try these recipes yourselves while the snow lasts and if you do, please make sure your snow source is pristine, untouched and nowhere near a road. We had fun running outside for the fresh fluffy snow, and enjoyed the old-fashioned tastes created by people who knew how to make due.

Be safe!