Snow cone... with or without condensed milk?

Picture it: It’s scorching hot, you just finished cross the stage and dying for something sweet and cold to rejuvenate you because you need to keep going until the police gets you out of Port of Spain….a snow cone will hit the spot!

Or: The bell just rang which means school just finish and time to travel home but, a little 25cent snow cone would hit the spot before fighting your way through the Croissee to get a taxi.

But where?? Where to find this Trini treat? Ahhh…the snow cone man in his converted bicycle snow cone trolley, complete with a myriad of coloured sweet syrups and the tin of condensed milk. Herein lies the question: with or without condensed milk?

Long time the snow cone would come in a plain white or blue and white polka dot paper cone as shown in the picture above. It used to also be known as “shave ice”. You would ask the snow cone man for a straw so that you can pump the ice in the syrup to turn it into slushy goodness which will then be devoured. The red syrup will inevitably end up staining your cheeks and dripping all over the once white school shirt but what happens next usually involves licks and is another story entirely…!

Snoopy snow cone machine

As a child I didn’t care for the sweetened condensed milk as this just got in the way of me seeing the rainbow colored syrups. The colors mesmerized me. Which tasted better? The blue one? The red one? The yellow one? All the colors mixed?

I remember in 1981, I got a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine one Christmas after begging my life away. The ad on TV promised hours of snow cone making fun and I had to have it. It turned out to be a paltry substitute for the real snow cone man around the savannah or just outside the school yard. There was barely enough shaved ice to fill a tablespoon, much less a whole cup. And it was a nightmare to crank the turn shaft to shave the ice! No, it wasn’t the “Same with a Snoopy Snow Cone machine”!

As for condensed milk or not, I found that adults tend to go for the condensed milk, but I still don’t.

Lord Melody, preserves some of the Trini street cries of the day in his song entitled “The Ice Man”:-

”Street cry in the city really does amuse me!”

“Plantain to boil and fry! Plantain to boil and fry!”

“Bottles! Bottles! Bottles! Lady any bottles today!”

“But the nicest cry of them all, is when I hear the ice man bawl: Ice! Ice! Cold ice! Hard ice! All kind a ice!”