Sure you do, it was that great box of stuff that Dan and his lovely lady sent me through that was, quite literally, crammed with goodies from the States. The most amazing thing about the box was all the things that I’d heard of all through growing up, but never got to experience – while a lot of folks overseas actually see them as routine or mundane.

Amongst these treasures was several packets of Kool-Aid. 18 sachets to be exact.

This may still be surprising but in the UK we don’t have Kool-Aid, sure we have crystals to make gelatine desserts and milkshakes, but sugary fruit drinks just didn’t come up here, we instead use the syrupy squash and cordial mixes to tied us through the summer months and after-sports cool downs.

Our walls and fences remaining unmolested by glass pitchers over the generations, which seems such a shame. My first real memory of seeing anything related to Kool-Aid came from US comics, which were always seen as the smaller and more expensive version of British comics, seeing as most would be reprinted in other comics in full. Heck, Transformers in the UK used to feature an entire US issue, a US issue of Spiderman and a UK original strip from time to time, all crammed in and costing less than a monthly US comic – and ours was weekly or fortnightly.

But it was in these US comics that so many adverts would appear, mostly for zit cream, Chips Ahoy and Three Musketeers, but sometimes featuring Kool-Aid and what seemed like the greatest idea ever – this warehouse thing. We never really got pyramid schemes and coupon deals here, the nearest we had was collecting ‘proof of purchase’ for Action Force when they never really offered much trade-in.

Occassionally, imported tv shows would give a reference to the drink or you’d see a ‘typical american mom’ walk in to a room carrying a huge glass jug and the word Kool-Aid would become subtly imprinted in your brain, even if you had no idea what it was. Over time I learnt small things about it, the first that it was powder – not so shocking to a mind that had tried to add Nesquik powder to fizzy lemonade to try to make flavoured fizzy drinks (bear in mind though, the flavours were strawberry, banana or chocolate at the time). But not any more.

Here I was then, with a whole heap of choice, I had intended to pick one at random from a cap and mix that up so that it was really luck of the draw, heck I have my trusty Ness cap from the Mother and Smash series, it’s still sat atop the baseball bat in the corner of my room. But the inclusion of the Lemonade and Orange flavours might mean random selection leads to a less than dramatic ending. If it makes you feel better though, I’m happy to let us all pretend I went down the random route.

The flavour I ended up with, Black Cherry, which by a fortunate stroke is one of my favourite flavours for ‘jell-o’, ice cream and yoghurt. I had no doubts that it would be a good pick.

Now I decided to give myself a heads-up on the process for making Kool-Aid, I like thinking of it as a process, because it’s hardly a recipe. I was a little surprised that it was more than just mix with water, and the whole measuring thing was just a bit whacky.

You see there are two issues with the amount of Kool-Aid you get from a packet, the first is that it’s enough to fill a two quart pitcher, except in the UK we don’t tend to sell pitchers that big, and secondly we don’t tend to use quarts that much. So, I found out that a quart is about 1.1 litres, so it could make about 2 litres. This was about a litre bigger than the biggest jug I could get, except measuring jugs but that was going to be all plastic and spill-y.

So, you know, instead I figured that if I’m going to be using nearly two litres of water, why not just buy a two litre bottle of water and tip the Kool-Aid powder in that. Pretty sneaky, huh?

Yeeee-no. See the other step is to include a cup of sugar – and once again ‘damn you, imperial measures’ – so I had to remove enough water to allow that to be added. One whole cup of sugar seemed a lot, but we’ll see how that goes. I decided to use the finer caster sugar, it’s the same stuff just more finely granulated to break down in baking, this will prove important in a moment I assure you.

So, I tip in the Kool-Aid and, by God, it is amazing just how quickly the water changes to that burgundy colour and how much of the kitchen aroma changes from ‘we need to empty that bin, the packaging the steaks were in is starting to whiff’ to ‘ooh, black cherry’. The process looked almost magical, a small wisping cloud reaching in to the bottle and then spreading out.

Then I had to pour in the crystalized dental cavities, and I became increasingly aware of the amount of sugar this actually took, I’m probably going to take the suggestion of using sweetener instead next time, but for authenticity I had to see what the kids got.

Now, the thing about a pitcher is that it allows you to stir, the thing about a bottle is that you can’t really. However, I’m British and like any good male Brit I look for any opportunity to say “Shaken, not stirred”, and that’s exactly how I mixed it. This is where caster sugar pays off, because it dissolves much faster that granulated and without sediment. So after shaking my wild thang in the kitchen for three minutes ten seconds (enough time to listen to Rooster’s “Come Get Some“) it appeared ready, but it was room temperature so before I could taste the experiment, in the fridge it had to go.

After a while it was time to take the concoction from its chilled storage and give it a taste. I am so glad I chose Black Cherry, because it tasted just brilliant and so much like the jelly I love. I can see as well how some people can mix it for alcohol, because it slips down so well. I expected the cup of sugar to really make it sweet, but the flavouring had it’s own sharpness to keep that in check.

Man, I wish we had this when I was a kid, it’s nice to drink and fun to make – even if not the healthiest choice sugar wise. Brilliant stuff.