It’s here again, dear friends, and I’m all excited – my second biggest day of the year right after New Year’s Eve (after all, it DID use to be New Year’s Eve in ancient Celtic days), Halloween, aka Samhain! Have you done all the shopping and preparations, too, chosen your costumes and the menu for the feast? I’m concentrating more on the drinks this year, wanting to do something special; and I’ve come up with something perfect for all of you who have kids, or who don’t want to, or (like me) can’t drink: an alcohol-free Halloween punch that guarantees not only tasty refreshment but also, of course, lots of fun!
Looking for inspiration, I came across this fabulous post by Two Healthy Kitchens: a choice of no less than ten different non-alcoholic Halloween punch recipes!
So, I chose the one that I found the most stunning-looking, the one by Emily Leary on a creepy red cranberry juice basis:
Of course, with most recipes for special occasions it’s not always possible to get hold of all the necessary ingredients; in this case, it was the lychees I couldn’t get anywhere in town – so I used jelly eyeballs instead of lychees and blueberries. Also, no jelly worms were available, but I thought snakes would do as well; and instead of clementines, I used their close relatives, tangerines. So here are the ingredients I used; feel free to play around with them yourselves as well, dear friends, there are no limits to creativity when it comes to conjuring up a special holiday treat!
1l cranberry juice, 1.5l clear lemonade, 3 tangerines, 4 jelly snakes, 4 jelly eyeballs
Also, especially for the occasion, I got a skull ice cube mould from Amazon, which produces shiny-eerie little ice skulls that will add a spooky touch to any drink you’ll prepare on Halloween. But I actually went a step further and made them with milk instead of water – the result were authentic-looking white skulls, which also produced a spooky effect when melting, plus adding a creamy aroma to the punch!
The procedure for your Halloween punch is simple, once you’ve got your skull ice cubes getting ready in the freezer: first, prepare your little tangerine jack o’lanterns by carving faces into them with a sharp kitchen knife. The whole family can help here for additional fun!
Then, pour the juice and the lemonade in your punch bowl, throw in the tangerines, the jelly eyeballs and the skull ice cubes, and hang the worms around the top of the bowl. Ready!
And, of course, if any of your guests insist on having a bit of an alcoholic kick in theirs, you can add a shot of something to their glass; Bacardi is probably the best choice in this case.
While I’m sure this will be one of the highlights of your party, here are some more tips to really get into the mood: for example, what about reading a bit about the whole history of the feast of Halloween, from the New Year celebration in the old Celtic realms on the British Isles to the global spook party it’s become? Here’s a very interesting book I read just lately:
Then, of course, you need a creepy film to watch; we’ve decided on Sleepy Hollow this year, Tim Burton’s masterpiece starring the one and only Johnny Depp, an adaptation of the classic Washington Irving story about the Headless Horseman haunting the forests of old New England – believe me, it doesn’t get much creepier than this…
And as for the music for your party, you can never go wrong with the soundtrack to Bram Stoker’s Dracula – babababamm-bamm-bamm, babababamm-bamm-bamm…
So, have a Happy Halloween, dear friends, wherever you are!
