So those of you that are regular readers know that I have a serious Harry Potter fan at home. My 8 year old just loves the movies and books so much so that we have made two trips to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Florida.
One of our favorite treats from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the Pumpkin Juice. I always hear people talking about the Butterbeer, which is also good, but we find it to be extremely sweet. So sweet that one glass is usually too much for the four of us to share.
The pumpkin juice on the other hand, is amazing. It is primarily apple cider with hints of pumpkin and apricot and I find it refreshing and delicious. It is hard to track Pumpkin Juice down- I can get it at Universal Studios and every so often I will see it at a gourmet candy store- usually it is priced fairly high.
So I played with a recipe and came up with something that is pretty close to what you find in the Universal Studios version of Pumpkin Juice. You really have to try this because it is so easy and such a fun twist on a standard apple cider.
The flavor of the Pumpkin Juice is mostly apple cider-ish so don’t be scared off by adding the pumpkin puree. I bet your kids love this drink and what a perfect treat to make for a Harry Potter family movie night.
- 32oz Apple Cider (or Apple Juice- please see note below)
- 6 tablespoons pumpkin puree
- 10oz peach or apricot or pear juice*
- Add all three items to a blender and blend for a few seconds to completely incorporate.
The trick to making this juice is finding some sort of peach, apricot or in a real pinch, pear juice or smoothies. You might check the single serve juice section of your store or the shelf stable juice section of your favorite store and see what you find. I had to really look around to find these flavors. I preferred to use juices for a lighter flavored drink. If you do find peach smoothies, that also works but your consistency will just be slightly thicker.
My favorite juice so far has been the Juiceology Peach and Mango flavor– I found this at Sprouts stores. I have also tried Apricot juice from Santa Cruz Organic and that was also very good.
This is the cute little Pumpkin Juice bottles that you can buy at Universal Studios. The actual ingredients on the back of the bottle include: Water, Apple Juice Concentrate, Pumpkin Puree, Apricot Puree, Sugar and other stuff you can’t pronounce.
I decided to use real fresh apple cider in my version instead of apple juice concentrate to try and reduce the sugar just a bit. If you are struggling to find the peach juice or apricot juice, I would be really interested to see what fresh or frozen fruit puree does for this drink. I bet it is delicious and even less sugar added. We have an Apricot shortage this year due to the drought in CA so I haven’t seen any apricots anywhere to do a taste test.
One last little note, if you do decide to use Apple Juice instead of Apple Cider, I would recommend adding a small amount of pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon- maybe 1/4 teaspoon of each to get that extra layer of flavor.
I hope you enjoy this recipe! Please be sure to come back and let me know what you think!
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Tried this, it is like virgin pumpkin pie moonshine. LOL
Thank you so much for this post! We have a little California Harry Potter fan turning 6 in a couple of days and i am struggling to figure out the food that is not a complete sugar tsunami, so this is extremely helpful.
oh good! I hope he likes it Cat 🙂