Pure White Punch for Celebrating the Sacraments

This past January our family celebrated the Sacraments of First Confession and First Holy Communion for two of our daughters, immediately followed by our new baby boy's Baptism.

I wanted to make a white punch to serve along with the Baptism and First Communion Cakes at the reception, since white is a symbol for purity.  I ended up modifying a recipe for White Holiday Punch from Food.com, cutting back on the amount of ice cream.  It was perfect!

Pure White Punch

Ingredients:

1 cup water
2 cups sugar
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
1 tablespoon almond extract
6 (2 liter) bottles carbonated lemon-lime beverage
2 (½ gallon) carton vanilla ice cream

Directions:

Over medium heat, mix the sugar and water in a saucepan, stirring constantly until the sugar is dissolved.  Remove from heat, add the evaporated milk and almond extract.   Chill until you are ready to serve your punch.  (I did this step the night before the big day.) 

When you are ready to serve the punch, combine the milk mixture and lemon-lime drink (I used 7-up) in a punch bowl.  Add the scoops of ice cream, and stir to break up the ice cream, incorporating it into the punch.

Note:  This makes a lot of punch, enough to fill my little punch bowl about 6 times.   It would have been easier to have a much larger bowl, but instead I just filled it with one liter of 7-up at a time, adding 1/6th of the milky mixture, and then finishing it with 1/3 of a carton of vanilla ice cream.