Pineapple Wedding Punch

It's been my experience that punch is a mainstay at some particular social functions--showers and receptions, for instance. So I wanted to have some at my wedding reception. Since the event wasn't catered, punch was definitely something I would have to take into my own hands. Alhamdulillah it worked out really well, and many people enjoyed the punch. (And if anyone didn't, they didn't tell me!)

While punch recipes abound on the internet, with varying degrees of difficulty, I decided instead to use a punch recipe that my mother has kept from her mother. It's actually a recipe for "Champagne Punch" but according to my mother, they never used champagne in it. And of course I didn't use champagne in it either, so I've renamed it "Pineapple Punch."

I thought I might not want to share the recipe on the internet--since there really are so many recipes for punch out there--but really, if a few people use the recipe, what of it? So here it is.

The simple recipe makes "50 servings" according to the recipe card, but I'm inclined to think it makes 25 at best. I basically multiplied the recipe by 4--and made two batches of that. It's difficult to make so much at a time, however. It took me two dutch ovens to make it, and that's the biggest pot I have.

The recipe on the card calls for:

1 1/4 cups water

2 1/2 cups sugar

Boil the sugar in the water for 10 minutes

Add the following ingredients:

2 cups orange juice

1 cup lemon juice

2 cups pineapple syrup

2 cups crushed pineapple

Then at the last minute a 2 liter bottle of ginger ale is added.

On the other hand, when I made it, I did it a little differently. This recipe is how I actually made it, which is roughly 4x the amount in the recipe above.

5 cups of water

10 cups of sugar

Boil the sugar in the water for 10 minutes

Add the following:

1 half-gallon of orange juice (I used the kind with extra pulp)

1 large bottle of lemon juice (~42-48oz)

1 large can of pineapple juice (I think it was 40 oz)

2 large cans of crushed pineapple

And at the last minute, add ginger ale in an amount equivalent to how much punch you're using.

4 bottles (2 liter) of ginger ale.

I poured the punch mixture into empty 2-liter bottles and it filled four of them. Then 1 bottle of punch mixture and 1 bottle of ginger ale were poured into the punch bowl. The punch mixture should be refrigerated, and if the ginger ale is also refrigerated beforehand then the punch will be cold. I didn't add any ice or anything else.

Some slices of oranges, lemons, or pineapple would be a nice touch for someone who has time to cut them. This recipe worked really well because it was easy to make beforehand (I guess it took me about an hour from to get it all into the bottles and everything) and at the reception it only had to be mixed with the ginger ale, and it was a 1:1 ratio of punch mix to ginger ale, thus easy to keep track of how much to add.

Alhamdulillah it went over pretty well. We had about 100 guests at a 2-hour reception, and we had four bottles of punch left over. So the reception used 4 bottles of punch mixture and 4 bottles of ginger ale, i.e., just one batch of 4x the original recipe.

Which means I had 4 bottles left over. Anybody want some? :-)