Most of the time I randomly select recipes to review, but finding national food days is always a fun way to change things up. Last week I posted a Grasshopper cocktail for National Creme de Menthe Day, and today I’m celebrating another food day. Yup, there’s a National Rum Punch Day, it’s today, and I’m celebrating it with this Strawberry Blood Orange Rum Punch recipe. Because why not? 😁 Besides, a sweet and fruity rum punch sounds perfect for another hot summer day!
It makes me want to find the nearest swimming pool so that I can lie next to it, in the sun, sipping my rum punch. Careful, though; this drink goes down easy, and it packs a punch.
The Ingredients
I don’t drink rum regularly, so I had both types, dark and white, leftover from other rum recipes I have reviewed. I also assumed I had organic sugar on hand when I was out, so I ended up using the regular non-organic stuff.
The plan was to go to the grocery store to shop for the ingredients, but I ended up ordering them instead. No worries, Instacart showed everything I needed to make this rum punch in stock. I had to order from 2 different stores just to get the blood oranges, but I worked it out.
Then I got a text from my shopper that they didn’t actually have blood oranges. They did have cara cara oranges cara cara oranges, so I went with those. They’re a little redder than navel oranges, but not quite as red as blood oranges.
I was planning to juice them for this rum punch recipe when I discovered another nearby store had blood orange juice. My husband was nice enough to pick up a bottle for me, so my cara cara oranges suddenly got demoted to garnishes. The blood orange looks like the main flavor (and color) of this punch, so I was glad I found it.
The Process
There are only 2 steps in the instructions, but there are a few things going on. All of them were simple, though. I placed the strawberries into a mixing glass and muddled them with the sugar. In fact, I think I went a little overboard with the muddling, but I wanted lots of strawberry juice.
After that, I added the citrus juices to the mix. I loved that I could juice the citrus fruit without worrying about straining it. That came next, once all the fruit juices were combined. It made things quicker and easier.
The strained juices went into a glass over ice cubes, then I added the rum and topped it all off with plain sparkling water. The recipe says to use about 2 ounces, but I used a bit more to fill up the glass.
A good stir and a garnish, and my Strawberry Blood Orange Rum Punch was ready to sip. One cocktail took me 7 minutes to make and garnish, which was a little under the 10-minute time listed.
