Do You Want to Build a Snow Cone?

I am always looking for fun, do it yourself type of activities for our kids to teach them how to make fun treats at home…without having to spend an arm and a leg.  My kids love food…I guess the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree…and one of their favorite activities is to make food…especially desserts.

One of our favorite food makers we discovered at Walmart in the Spring was Yonanas.  Yonanas makes frozen treats using only fruit.  It’s amazing, it’s just like eating ice cream or sorbet.  We have served many Yonanas treats to our friends and I cannot tell you how many of them went out and bought one too as a result.  I love Yonanas, not only for the taste, but because it involves only healthy and nutritious fruit.

We went back to Walmart to see what new fun kid-friendly appliances they have for Summer and found the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver and some Hawaiian Punch flavorings.  Granted, it’s not the healthiest treat, but it sure is refreshing!  The kids could not wait to get home and try it.

We gathered up a bunch of ice and got to work.  First we experimented with the Hawaiian Punch Orange Ocean and Green Berry Punch, as these were the two flavors Walmart had at the time.  Later we went back to Walmart and the had  blue and red Hawaiian Punch flavors as well.

The kids set it up the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver completely and within minutes the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver was shooting out ice shavings.  And the shavings were just right – not to hard and not too soft.  In fact, my daughter said they were better than the snow cone she had at our church’s Vacation Bible School (VBS), which rented a professional snow cone maker.

Now let me warn you, these shavings really do shoot out!  Better take cover if your child is not catching them well enough with his/her cone!  We found it worked best to compact the snow cone ice as we went along so that we could achieve that nice snow cone mound at the top.  It took about 45 seconds to a minute for one snow cone to be ready.

In making three snow cones, we filled up the ice canister 2 1/2 times, though our ice cubes are big and round.  I’m sure if we had the thin longer kind, we would have been able to fill the ice canister more fully.

Time for the flavors!

Using the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver

It couldn’t get any easier.  Plug the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver in, open the lid on top, add ice cubes, close the lid and press a button.  That’s it!

The motor is completely closed  and the blades are made from plastic.  There is no risk of your children getting hurt because they first must close the lid and press down for the ice to begin shaving.  The ice crushes relatively fast and shoots out into your waiting cone or cup.  With loading the machine full of ice, we were able to make 3 full cones at a time, before adding more ice to make more cones.

After you’re done making your snow cones, simply open the lid and turn the Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver upside down in the sink to drain the water.  Once, we forgot to do this and left the ice in the machine.  Although the water did leak out, it wasn’t much to clean up.

Features:

• Shaves ice pretty quickly
• 50 watt motor cuts ice efficiently
• Quick and simple push top makes it easy to use

Pros:

• Creates a soft snow cone type ice, not too hard
• Very easy to use
• Kid-friendly – kids can use it themselves without worry of getting hurt
• Fun to use
• Reasonably priced

Cons:

• Hmmm, perhaps that the ice could shoot out faster!

The Rival Blizzard Ice Shaver sells for $19.88 in Walmart stores as well as online at Walmart.com.

A Mom’s Perspective