My favorite food group? Party food. I know, maybe that doesn't exist on your pyramid of food groups, but it does on mine! What can I say, I really like bite-sized foods. And it doesn't hurt to wash them down with a glass of punch, amiright?
It's the delicious punch that I'm here to talk about right now. Specificially, how I recently made it in individual serving sizes. And served it in cute little mason jars to boot!
The first step is obvious: gather up a bunch of mason jars and make sure they're clean.
The next step was a little trickier. I really wanted a cute lid that a straw could go through...you know, like these that are all over Pinterest?
Small problem: where the heck do you buy those? Especially when you're in a time crunch?
So I had to improvise. When I purchased my jars, the lids they came with had printing on them. No problem, I just picked up an extra box of canning lids. Except I realized after opening the box that the extras had printing on them, too. Grrr.
While I sulked about the printing on the lids, I went ahead and started making my straw holes. This was super easy - just drill a hole through each lid. Don't cheat and try to stack them all up and do them together at one time. It won't work out well...trust me on this. But don't worry, it takes hardly no time at all to do them individually.
My mom is a genius and suggested spray painting the lids to cover up the printing. How in the world had I not already thought of that? Duh! My color scheme for the shower was pink and green, and I already had green spray paint on hand so that's what I used. After a quick 30 minutes of drilling holes and then spray painting, my lids looked like this.
That was the hardest part, so if you make it this far (or if you're lucky enough to find the cute pre-cut lids), the rest is easy breezy.
The shower was on a Sunday afternoon, so before church that morning I started preparing my punch. First up was the pink ingredient: raspberry sherbert. It was really hard, but some how I managed to refrain from having sherbert for breakfast.
I scooped at least two spoonfuls into each jar.
And then topped them with the green lids and metal rings.
My sherbert got pretty melty during scooping, so I popped the jars back in the freezer. I wouldn't need to do the next step until after church anyway. Oh, I wouldn't suggest doing this way, way in advance and then putting them in the freezer with these lids. The holes might make the sherbert a little frosty and freezer-tasting. Mine were only in the freezer a couple hours though so they were fine.
I, of course, forgot to take pictures of the final step, but I think you'll be able to handle it. A few minutes before the shower started, I pulled the jars out of the freezer and took the lids off. In a pitcher, I had mixed together equal parts pineapple juice and ginger ale. I poured the liquid over the punch until the jar was full, and then put the lid back on.
Done!
To keep them cool, I filled a punch bowl full of ice and plopped them down in it.
(I forgot to take a picture of them until near the end of the shower. They are pretty melted in the pic above.)
Next to the punch bowl I had another jar full of pink straws. Here's a melty version of the final look.
Who says you have to use a crystal bowl and sip punch out of little glass with your pinky out? Mason jars + straws are way more fun!
I won't lie, if I hadn't used every last bit of the sherbert up, I probably would've served these to myself all week long...