Zay and Mel’s Fun Punch! (Alcoholic fruit punch)

WELL… summer in Sydney was a bit of a no-show! After a few beautiful days over the holiday break, it seems like we’ve angered the weather-gods somehow – rain is forecast for every day over the next month! (nooooo!)

Anyway, I was going to share our Fun Punch “recipe” (the word recipe is used here very loosely) – to sip as you while away the long and warm summer nights… oh well. Now we can drink punch anyway, and pretend.

Our fun punch recipe is based on Zay’s tita’s recipe… reverse engineered, and with our own little twists. That’s kind of the fun of it though – there’s no real way you can mess it up! As long as you keep topping it up with ice and juice (and booze) all night, it’ll be good to go. As we say… all roads lead to fun punch!

The base of the punch is a sweet moscato. I just picked the cheapest at Dan Murphy’s, which happened to be this one for $7:

And cheap tropical juice:

Zay’s tita (that’s filipino for aunty!) recommends that you pre-freeze half a bottle of tropical juice into a big block – then you can place it straight in your punch, and it will keep it cold as it melts. Unfortunately we weren’t that organised, so we just put in the juice as it was, and made do with regular ice.

Other ingredients included…

Tinned fruit salad in syrup:

Strawberries:

Which were then sliced and left to soak in a few shots of vodka

I also added some thinly sliced nectarine:

And slices of lime:

As well as a good squeeze of lemon juice!

Top it up with some soda water and some torn mint leaves and that’s it really… embarrassingly simple, but very very tasty!

Zay & Mel’s Fun Punch

Ingredients

1 bottle sweet Moscato
1 bottle tropical juice
1 bottle soda water
4 shots of vodka
1kg can of fruit salad in syrup
1 punnet strawberries
1 nectarine
1 lime
1 lemon
mint
ice (optional)

The night before: pour half your tropical juice into a plastic container with a lid (or some clean takeaway boxes will do) and place them in the freezer. Put the half-full bottle of tropical juice back in the fridge.

The day of: Bring your tropical ice block out of the freezer to thaw as you prep the rest of the ingredients.

Slice half of the strawberries, and finely dice the other half (and reserve a few for garnishes). Place these into a small bowl and add the 4 shots of vodka and leave them to soak.

Finely slice the rest of the fruit, and place them inside your fancy punch bowl! Add the whole can of fruit salad, including the syrup. Add your tropical fruit ice blocks.

Pour in half the bottle of Moscato, and half the bottle of soda water, and add the rest of the tropical juice, and a squeeze of lemon to taste.

Tear the mint leaves and sprinkle on top.

As the night goes on, keep topping up your fun punch with the moscato, soda water and tropical juice! Serve with a strawberry perched on the glass, or a paper umbrella if you are fancy. chin-chin!