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Circus Punch
1 cup sugar 1 cup water 2 lemons (juice) 1/2 cup of apricot juice 1/4 cup canned cherry juice 1/4 cup orange juice 2 qts.ginger ale Boil sugar and water almost 10 minutes. Cool, and add fruit juice and chill. When ready to serve, add ginger ale. When serving, use colored ice cubes and cherries in the glasses. Serves 12.
A sugar-syrup punch of the kind that filled glass bowls at 1930s children's parties and club luncheons. The only technical step is the syrup, and the only thing that can spoil it is adding the ginger ale too soon.
- Add the ginger ale lastMix the syrup and juices ahead and refrigerate them, but hold the ginger ale until the bowl is on the table. Poured in early it goes flat and the punch tastes like sweet fruit water.
- The syrupOne cup sugar to one cup water boiled for nearly 10 minutes, as directed, reduces well past a simple syrup. Two to three minutes at a full boil is enough to dissolve the sugar; the recipe gives no reason for the longer boil.
- Apricot juiceRarely sold as such now. Use the syrup drained from a can of apricot halves, or apricot nectar, which is thicker than what is intended here and may want thinning with water.
- Canned cherry juiceThe liquid from a can or jar of sweet or sour pitted cherries. Maraschino syrup will work but is much sweeter and more strongly flavored; use half the quantity if that is all you have.
- LemonsTwo lemons give roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup juice. The recipe is heavily sweet, so taste before serving and add more lemon rather than more sugar.
- Colored ice cubesFreeze water tinted with a drop of food coloring, or better, freeze some of the fruit juice itself so the punch does not dilute as the cubes melt.
- YieldServes 12 as written, which works out to roughly 6 to 7 oz per glass -- a small-glass portion rather than a tumbler. Scale up accordingly for a tall-glass service.