Eye Tai punch for Halloween

I finally found a good virgin Mai Tai recipe and I want to save it!
This makes 1 gallon + of punch, can halve the recipe.

Eye Tai punch for Halloween

Ingredients:

• 1 liter orange juice
• 3 liters pineapple juice
• 1 cup lime cordial or sweetened lime juice (in the alcohol mixer section of the grocery store)
• 1 cup almond syrup (you can make this with 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, and 1 t. almond extract)
• 1 cup grenadine
• 1 liter sparkling/seltzer water
• ice
•  2 cans lychee fruit
• blueberries
• raspberry jam

 1. The day before, make the almond syrup and let cool. Then make the eyeballs and freeze. You make the eyeballs by filling the inside of each lychee fruit with raspberry jam and a blueberry. Put on a cookie sheet and freeze overnight.
2. The next day, mix the juices, syrups, and bubble water and ice together. Add the frozen eyeballs, they will float in the punch as long as they stay frozen. After that it gets a little gross but in some ways that might be even better for halloween! 

Mai Tai

This is our favorite Hawaii beverage!! For Halloween it became "eye tai" for obvious reasons:

I liked the taste of this recipe quite a bit and felt it was pretty close to the good ones we had in Hawaii, here it is:

The Perfect Mai Tai
adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

• 2 cups light rum
• 2 cups dark rum
• 1 cup orange curacao (orange flavored liqueur) or triple sec
• 1 cup almond flavored syrup or almond liqueur like amaretto
• 1 cup simple syrup (2 cups of sugar and one cup of water, boiled until dissolved)
• 10 limes, juiced
• 1/2 gallon fresh orange juice or other juice (I found a mixed tropical juice for this!)

Mix all ingredients together and serve with LOTS of ice. Beware this drink is delicious and strong!! Enjoy.

Blackberry Cordial

Before I made this recipe, I wasn't even quite sure what a cordial was. As it turns out, it is something very nice indeed.

Blackberry Cordial

ingredients:

3 cups blackberries
1 cup (or more to taste) sugar
1 quart vodka

method:

Mash berries and sugar together in a quart mason jar. Fill the jar with vodka and store in a dark place for 3-4 weeks, then strain.

It's amazing how the blackberry flavor just bursts out of the drink -- like somehow it tastes more like blackberries than the actual berries themselves -- not like storebought flavored vodkas at all. The original recipe mentioned that this blackberry cordial would be very refreshing mixed with club soda over ice with a squeeze of lime and sprig of mint, I hope mine lasts long enough to try this. I will definitely be making lots more blackberry cordial when berry season comes around next year!