Snowcoa!

 If you're in lovely Ottawa, you'd look outside and think that it's the perfect weather for a barbecue.

 

We at A Book of Cookrye have been indulging in two of our favorite winter hobbies: driving with car heater turned up high enough to wear short sleeves and sandals in spite of the freeze, and making tasty treats with snow.

A few years ago, a new liquid sugary delight hit gas stations everywhere: frozen hot chocolate. A lot of us joked about how silly the name was, but it seems I'm nowhere near the only one who decided the stuff is actually really good. I used to agree with the snarks who were like "Don't you just mean chocolate milk?", but you have to admit that if you make hot chocolate from a packet and get it cold, it tastes different than if you made chocolate milk.

Hot chocolate mix and just enough hot water to dissolve.

 

And so, we reach the magic moment! I'd figured I'd just make really concentrated hot chocolate syrup and pour it out like snow-cone syrup. However, I failed to realize that snow-cone syrup generally isn't boiling hot. Therefore it doesn't cut through the snow on contact.

 

Our snow may have deflated to nearly nothing on contact with hot chocolate, but it's still really good. I think even the most refined people who have spent years making their tastes "grown up" have a few cheap things they like. You know, the sort of foods that are only guilty pleasures because you feel guilty that your tastes aren't "grown up" enough. Anyway, hot chocolate made from a mix (especially with those weird desiccated marshmallow globules) is one of mine.

Stay warm, everyone! 

Hump-Day Quickie: Rose Snow

Some of you may have picked up on how excited we at A Book of Cookrye get about snow. Yes, it makes driving a frightening experience (incredibly, people still didn't put their phones down!). And yes, it shuts things down a lot. But still- it's snow!
We had scooped some up and frozen it. As much as we'd like to save it for when it's really hot out, the freezer has little reliability. Therefore, let us enjoy it before it becomes a sad pan of melted water!

This has just a smidge of a capful of rose water (which is surprisingly concentrated) and enough sugar to make it sweet. It also is astonishingly delicious. When a friend of mine tried some, her eyes lit up and she said "This is the best stuff on Earth!"

Happy springtime, everyone!

It's snowing!

We at A Book of Cookrye are having meteorological troubles.



Yes indeed, the world is covered in beautiful fluffy glitter that makes driving impossible. There were a lot of snowball fights. I saw some people playing in the snow right outside my building and jumped into the picture thinking they were neighbors. Turns out they don't live in my building or anywhere near me, but now they have pictures with someone who looked like this.

Being cold is for other people.

At any rate, we were super excited to make snow muffins with actual snow!

They're just giving the stuff away!

They were slightly lumpy but still delicious. As excited as we were to make them with proper snow, they might be better made with sleet.

Magical winter muffins!

And what might one have with snow muffins? Snow tea, of course! Production was slightly hampered when the snow shrank a lot while melting.

Fortunately, since there was so much of it outside (for free!), we easily brought in more.

That's not cloudiness in the water, that's winter magic. It's the fairydust that lets an entire heaping skillet of snow fit into one really tiny pot.

All of that snow is in this one cup of tea. It's concentrated winter wonderland.

Stay warm, and be careful if you have to drive on ice!

Snow Muffins, or Of course the Canadians would make this

As the day begins to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen. Or, to put it less poetically, it's pretty damn cold!
Anyway, we at A Book of Cookrye realized that it's raining ingredients out of the sky.

Wow, my phone in low light goes past bad to Instagram filter.

Why do I have a picture of the ground, you may ask? Because that is where I gathered ingredients for...

Favorite Recipes of America: Desserts, 1968

That's right, we're trying favorite foods of Canada! If you're in Canada, do let us know if this recipe is at all familiar to you.
We would not have noticed this recipe had ingredients list not called for "clean white snow, dry and crisp." Of course! In Canada, they have bitter cold winters! Who else but those with Canadian winters would decide to cook snow?
Having no idea what a "buche de neige" is, we checked the directions and... it's muffins! Snow muffins! Seriously, it's muffins with snow in them!

Not as much butter as usually gets used around here, but it looks worse floating on the milk like that.

This is one of those recipes that make us wonder "How did this happen?" Water muffins have been around for a long time, but who among Canada's pioneer homemakers was so impatient one winter that they couldn't even let the snow they'd scooped up melt before baking? Or perhaps these are so tasty that such waiting became impossible?

Also, does what does "stir slightly" mean? We do hope this is what the pioneering Canadians had in mind.

Here we must admit we had to make a slight substitution. You see, we did not get any snow, so we had to use sleet instead.

We also had to be very careful not to scoop up dirt and mulch.

And now, we are pleased to present a shot of one of the most controversial ingredients ever featured on A Book of Cookrye!

You know what? Let's bring the camera closer. This ingredient has caused more impassioned dispute among those who've eaten our creations than anything else we have ever used.

That's right, we're using raisins. Those evil, eeeeevil things that make people spit things out in disgust. Those terrible things whose resemblance to chocolate chips has traumatized so many people. You'd have thought I'd have heard a fair amount of "eeeeew, you got that from outside?" as I mixed these up, but all the grievances I received was on account of the presence of raisins.

The sleet kind of looks like tapioca.

These muffins got really high in the center. I thought they were going to rise right into the rack above them (owing to multiple people using the oven at once, the racks were very close together).

Those who don't suffer raisin flashbacks liked these a lot. The mace was unusual but went really well in them. Plus, this is a really fun recipe to make-- I can totally see bringing it out every winter when the snow gets really severe. So, hooray sleet muffins! I want to make them every time we get snow!
However, these are more of a breakfast than a dessert. However, I'm glad they made their way into a dessert book anyway.

And so, in conclusion, please enjoy this picture of me being totally prepared for this weather.

Stay warm and watch out for inept drivers, everybody!