Naughty Punch

Loving Lunches and The Kids Menu have teamed up to give your classic Christmas recipes a Naughty or Nice makeover.  We have a new Naughty and Nice recipe for each day of the week - So whether you're Naughty or Nice this Christmas, we've got recipes for you!

 You asked for more recipes on the blog, so here's a whole week's worth for you! I was so excited when Nikki from The Kids Menu agreed to do this recipe series with me. Not only because I love her blog, but also because I got to see how some of my family favourite Christmas recipes would look like if they were, let's face it, any resemblance of healthy :-)

The first recipe I chose is one of my most requested within my family. Good old fashioned punch! The original 'recipe' goes something like:

• 1L Lemonade
• 1L Fruit Juice/Fruit Drink (I'm partial to Golden Pash from Golden Circle myself)
• 500mL Ginger Ale
• 800g (large tin) Fruit salad (I like the traditional with passionfruit, in juice)

In retrospect perhaps not the easiest recipe 'naughty' up - I mean, it's really just sugar and fizz - how could you possible make that even naughtier? (Apart from adding alcohol, which has been known to happen from time to time - you didn't hear it from me, but *cough* *cough* *scotch* . . . ) Add ice cream is how! Add a scoop of ice cream to turn this happy little misfit into a mischievous treat. That got me thinking. . .

Granita! OK so I didn't actually change the ingredients or add anything. I just froze the mix, stirred every hour for the first few hours & then left overnight. Scrape with a fork to get this wonderful fluffy texture.

Serve with some more tinned fruit salad on top and a few red M&Ms for garnish.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. Let's have a go at jelly! I did try to simply add gelatine to the mix, but gelatine and I have a touch & go relationship. If I touch it, it goes lumpy! So I decided to try something a little different. 

• 1 pack of lemonade jelly
• 1 pack of create-a-jelly
• 1 cup of fruit juice
• 50mL ginger drink (made as per directions)
• 150g fruit salad
• 1 cup boiling water

From past experience, fruit tends to float to the top during the setting process, so I filled my little container to the brink & upturned it in the fridge.

It worked! It did actually look this funny green/blue colour. Nothing a few glade cherries wouldn't fix though. I think this would look wonderful done in cone moulds to represent trees.

I wondered if I could make a gummy from the mix, so tried adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of gelatine to 1 cup of fruit salad. You see those little gingerbread men at the back? Yeah, there's a reason they're back there. I think I needed more gelatine. All those yellowish ones though? Let me tell you. . .

 I've never made gummy style lollies before. One of the first tutorial/recipes that popped up was this one from Meatified. It's quite a lengthy post and I still haven't read it all. I skipped to the recipe at the end. Basically 1 3/4 cups liquid to 6 tablespoons of gelatine. Easy enough. This time I skipped adding the fruit salad. I mixed half a cup of punch with the gelatine. . .

warmed the rest (1 1/4 cups) on the stove. . . 

 whisked in the gelatine mix. . .

Whisked a little more and pretty well all the foam dissolved, so I skipped the skimming step.

Pour into moulds, chill until set.

And set they did! You could also set in a baking tray and use cookie cutters to create fun shapes.

While these little jewels turned out a little too springy in texture for my liking, they have inspired me to experiment more with this idea. Our next watermelon better look out!

So that's my Naughty spin on Punch - spider, granita, jelly and gummies

Now hop on over to The Kids Menu to see the Nice Version, and don't forget to come back tomorrow for more Naughty-ness

Thank you to Jan Henry Solutions for our clever graphic!

~J

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on personal experience with the product.