Healthy Fruit Snow Cone Syrup Recipe and Tutorial

I've always liked the idea of snow cones, and have certainly eaten my share, especially in my youth.  But honestly, even then I was always somewhat disappointed in the flavor.  The bright colors had so much promise and allure...and then it mostly tasted like sugar, not like the fabulous fruit I had been promised.

So when I was putting together the Snow Cone Pool Party, I immediately thought about making my own snow cone syrups.  And then I got the idea to take it a step further: to make flavorful, fabulously fruity homemade snow cone syrups out of REAL fruit.  Healthier and more delicious, win win!

Snow cones start with the ice, of course, and I love this little snow cone ice shaver made by Rival.  It looks like they've changed the design a bit since we bought ours, but this thing works so well.  It's incredibly fast, uses regular ice, and makes a great, fine snow.

You want to know how easy this "recipe" for real fruit snow cone syrup is?  Get 100% juice frozen concentrate.  Thaw it out.

Yup, it was that easy.  I was adding a lot of water with the shaved ice, so I wanted an intensely flavored syrup.  (Also, remember, I've spent a lifetime being disappointed by the lack of fruit flavor in commercial snow cone syrups).  Taste it for yourself, and water it down as much as tastes right to you.

I will say that even I needed to water down the citrus juices.  Limeade, orange, and orange peach mango were all too much for me in their pure concentrated form.

The kids went nuts for these real fruit snow cone syrups!  And inexpensive cake decorating squeeze bottles were the perfect container for holding the syrups.  Easy to use, and they kept the mess to a minimum.

Some colors were naturally bright and beautiful, but some were less bright than traditional snow cones, but there wasn't one word of complaint for any of our taste testers.

They were far too busy eating and asking for seconds to even notice the lack of artificial food coloring.