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I made the spiked apple cider (from last week's post) for my cookie competition and it was a total hit. As usual, I froze some juice to use as the ice to keep the punch from getting watery. This year I made the ice in the Williams-Sonoma small presents cake pan, so I had frozen bow-wrapped apple juice packages floating in my punch!

girl42 - brilliant!

I usually either freeze some of the punch, iced tea, ginger ale (some component of the drink) to use as ice. I find fun shapes as well -- like I use a snowman muffin pan to make ice for my Christmas party.

i wonder what would happen if you froze your punch bowl half-filled with punch the night before, and then filled up the rest the next day? Eventually the ice would pop off the bottom and float to the top, but that would be fine, right? hmmmm...

A side note to girl42's solution:

If you're making a very boozy punch, remember that alcohol's freezing point is much lower than water's. To make sure your ice cubes fully freeze, use your mixer (juice, tonic, what-have-you) and not the punch itself.

A friend made this mistake with a punch that was chock-full of, uh, "holiday cheer", and the ice cubes were very hesitant to form. Unless you're using a very high proof liquor -- like Everclear (eek) or Bacardi 151 -- this probably won't be an issue, but keep an eye on the cubes to be sure.

Super Ice-Making Tip #437: For pretty, crystal clear ice, use distilled water.

I like punch to look like my grandma's punch from my childhood--I use a bundt-shaped jello mold to freeze the juice or gingerale and pieces of fruit.

AlanMcCoy is right! For clear cubes on an ongoing basis, empty your (cooled) teakettle into your ice cube trays each time you make a fresh pot of tea.

your tea kettle does not contain distilled water. in fact it has concentrated the salts and minerals in your water.

if you want cooling without dilution: use dry ice but be sure that no one puts any in their cups - lip burns may result.

Another way to do it is to use an ice cream container- the plastic kind. My mum makes a fruit based punch and we freeze a mixture of juice and fruit in the container then drop it in the punch before serving, this way there is no watering down of the punch when it melts but rather just more flavour!

Respectfully differ with sciencegeek. Boiled water does make clear ice. Yes it is not distilled water but is not concentrated in minerals [unless you have boiled it a long time and reduced the volume.] It makes clear ice because it de-gassed by boiling. Gas [CO2, O2, Cl,...] nucleating out and forming tiny bubbles as the ice freezes this the main reason for cloudy ice. This is apparent in the appearance of the ice - the last water to freeze has the least clarity because of increasing concentration of dissolved gas in the water.

Warm water contains more dissolved gases than cold water.

My bad, I didn't mean to suggest that boiled = distilled. All I meant to say was that cooled boiled water gives me clear ice cubes. I don't give it further thought.