Halloween Punch with Eyeballs

This Halloween punch is deliciously fruity, doesn’t have any added sweetener or artificial ingredients, and can be made with or without alcohol. 

Here’s the Halloween punch recipe I promised in my Eyeball Cupcakes post. Like I said there, I love these lychee eyeballs and intend on using them in several spooky treats this year.

It’s so hard to find unprocessed Halloween recipes, and these eyeballs are SO easy, creepy and totally natural. You just need canned lychees and blueberries!

Ingredients in this punch

A lot of punch recipes call for ingredients I’ve never even heard of. I tried to keep things simple, but still delicious, and think I succeeded.

A fruity punch may seem odd for Halloween when people are probably more into warm drinks like Hot Spiced Apple Cider or Pumpkin Hot Chocolate, but those drinks don’t go with the lychee eyeballs.

And besides, who can turn down a rummy fruity drink? 😉

You just need:

• pineapple juice
• blood orange juice (or regular orange juice if you don’t care about the color)
• apple juice
• lime juice
• white rum (can be omitted for an alcohol-free version) 

For this punch, you just dump everything in a punch bowl. Bam. Done. 

Everything I used was 100% juice and no added sugar was needed. I couldn’t be bothered to make the simple syrup that you often find in punches, cocktails, etc. 

This drink was still sweet enough! I think anyone would be happy with it.

Note that the blood orange juice I used was a deep red color. If you use juice that’s more pinkish, the drink will be a bit pinker and less red.

Alcoholic vs. non-alcoholic 

If you’ve got some kids or non-drinking friends coming to your party (hopefully an outdoor, socially distanced, safe shindig!), just set some punch aside for them and then add your rum to the alcoholic version.

One thing that I just thought of is using sparkling apple cider / juice in place of the apple juice for a kid version. I think that’d be fun.

It’s been ages since I’ve had sparkling cider and don’t have it where I live so it could be a terrible idea. It’s easy enough to try out a tiny batch, though! 

To make a tiny test batch, use 2 tablespoons pineapple juice, 2 tablespoons blood orange juice, 1 1/2 tablespoons sparking apple cider / juice and 1/2 teaspoon lime juice.

Type and amount of rum

How much rum you use will, of course, depend on how rummy you want your punch. We thought that the amount listed in the recipe was perfect.

It was balanced without being too rummy. But you may want more. 

You can always buy an extra bottle and if not needed for the punch, make this amazing rum cake from scratch. Either for Halloween or you can keep it around until Christmas.

Or whenever. Rum cake is always great!

How to serve this drink

This Halloween punch is best served really cold. If you’ve got space in your freezer, I’d recommend putting the three bottles of juice and the rum in there for a few hours, until ready to serve. The small amount of lime juice can stay in the fridge.

It really takes 3 minutes to dump all the punch ingredients in a punch bowl so you don’t need to worry about making it ahead of time.

One way to ensure your punch stays cold is freezing the lychee eyeballs! 

Then there’s no ice watering down your punch. Once the eyeballs are frozen, you can’t stick a skewer through them but what I’d do is just plop them all in the punch to keep it really cold.

You could also stick them through the skewers and freeze them that way.

What are lychees?

Lychees are a type of fruit native to China, but in the United States, they’re also grown in Florida and Hawaii. They’re quite sweet and fragrant with some floral notes.

You can use fresh lychees, but they’re quite challenging to find. You can, however, find canned lychees at Asian food stores.

You can also often find them at Whole Foods. You might find them in the Asian food section or the canned fruit section. I’d recommend calling first before making a special trip.

Can I use something else instead of lychees?

I’ve never come across anything similar. I don’t have any idea how to recreate these eyeballs with different fruit. 

If you have an idea, let us know in the comments! And if you have any lychees left over, try this delicious looking sparkling watermelon lychee cocktail.

What can I use instead of the blueberries?

Inside of the eyeball is a blueberry. If you don’t want to use those, small grapes would probably work.

To figure out how many lychees + blueberries you’ll need, you’ve got to figure out how big you want your servings.

Check out the notes at the bottom of the recipe for more info about that.

If you try out this fruity Halloween punch, I’d love to hear how you like it!