Halloween Punch Ideas?

[BeckyM]

I'm hoping some of you have creative ideas for a punch to serve at a work (NO ALCOHOL) Halloween party. I did a search and saw two ideas: 1) freeze red punch into surgical gloves, and float them in a yellow punch; 2) peel lychees and float them in the punch to look like eyeballs.

While those are both interesting ideas, I'm wondering if anyone else has any cute ideas. I want something not too gruesome -- I still want people to actually drink it!

Any help would be much appreciated! :)

Becky

[sapphirestar]

Martha Stewart froze water in a face mask, so it looked like a face peering up from the punch!

[HARRYET]

you can freeze those inexpensive spider/bat rings into your ice cubes, then it looks like spiders floating in your punch.

you could float dry ice in a bowl inside your punch (kinda like a bowl in a bowl) for a smokey effect, also serve your punch from a plastic couldron (sp?).

Good Luck Ann :)

[Missi]

Equal parts of orange and grape kool-aid make a black colored punch.

[heatherfeather]

Food Network did a Halloween special with Family Fun Magazine and had a great Halloween non-alcoholic punch called "Rotten Apple Cider." The recipe is stil available at their site www.foodtv.com look under the show "Cooking Live"

Basically, it is just a punch bowl filled with apple cider. The "rotten apple" part is really the kicker - you take small pyrex dishes - the little tiny dishes for making individaul custards etc. and fill them with some of the cider, adding a few drops of red or green food coloring to the cider in the little dishes. Then dangle three gummy worms from each little dish, making sure the worm is partly in the cider. Then you freeze the dishes- they come out looking like half apples with worms sticking out of them. You then simply unmold them and float them in the rest of the cider.

[waddle]

Last year I froze water in latex gloves (they sell them at the drug store for cleaning) then removed the gloves and put the frozen hands in red punch. Was very easy and fun.
Have a great party!

[BeckyM]

Thanks for all the great ideas, everyone! Now I just have to decide which option to go with. I'm thinking maybe the frozen "hands" in the punch, but the "rotten apples" sound cute too. I also really like the idea of serving it from a cauldron -- I'll have to see if I have time to pick one up between now & Wednesday.

Thanks again, and Happy Halloween!

Becky :)

[Lynno1975]

When I was in grade school one of the room mothers would always make witches' brew. I can't remember what all was in it, but I think it was a 2 liter of 7UP or ginger ale and then lime sherbert mixed together and poured over a block of dry ice. I'm not sure where you go to get dry ice (I was only at the most 10 when I saw this done), but it's really cool. There's steam like foggy stuff that rolls out of the container (she would use a big tupperware round tub that looked like a huge cake lid). You could possibly use a plastic cauldron. I'm not sure about that, though. I do know that you have to be really careful handling the ice because you can get a burn off of it (sounds like an oxymoron if I ever heard one, I know). Good luck!

Lynn :-)

[BeckyM]

Well, I ended up going for a not-too-complicated option. I'm making a normal punch recipe that turns out sorta yellow/orange-ish, then I just put some gloves in the freezer filled with red fruit juice. I hope it works! I'm still debating about putting some darker food coloring in the punch to make it a dark green color or something, but then I'm worried people actually won't drink it.

I really liked the ideas about using dry ice somehow, but I ran out of time to figure out how to get the dry ice and then to actually pick it up, store it, etc. After all, it's just for work, and people would probably only minimally appreciate all the additional effort.

Thanks again for all your suggestions! I just hope my "hands" in the punch actually look like hands and not just like weird red blobs. I'm wondering how they'll float (back of the hand up? fingers up? wrist up?) and whether or not they'll be very visible. I'll just wait & see!

Becky :)

[HARRYET]

Becky,

this maybe to late for you, but maybe not for anyone else.

You can get dry ice at most local grocery stores, just ask the customer service desk or cashiers. As far as the cauldron goes, it works fine w/dry ice, i've done it several times in the past. my only suggestion is to put the dry ice in a seperate bowl in the cauldron, the dry ice breaks up and you really don't want it in your cup of punch.

hope this info helps Ann

[BeckyM]

Well, we had our Halloween party at work this afternoon, and the frozen "hands" didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

For starters, I used 100% Juice in some sort of "Berry Blend", that I thought would turn out red. It actually was more of a purple-red-brown color, and when it was frozen it looked mostly brown. I think maybe something with a more fakey bright red color (Hawaiian Punch?) would have probably shown up better.

I used the smallest glove size I could find, thinking that way the hands would look more realistic, but they floated with the fingers down and the back of the hand up, so they just looked like big red-brown blobs floating in the middle of the punch. Everyone kept asking me what it was.

I also had problems with the fingers breaking off as I was trying to remove the gloves. The first hand ended up with only two fingers left! I was more careful with the second hand, but I still broke one of the fingers.

So I think next year I will try one of the other great ideas. Maybe just ice cubes (or an ice ring) with fake spiders and some dry ice would make a more spooky punch.

Thanks again for all the ideas!

Becky :)