23. Getting Turnt Off Pudding
My grandma died right before Christmas. We all got together for the holiday and my aunt was, understandably, still taking it really hard. She had made something she called, “vanilla angel food pudding cake.” It was in a shallow casserole dish. The top layer was whipped cream and cookie crumble. Middle layer was vanilla pudding. Bottom layer was crumbled angel food cake, soaked to the top in a massive pool of bourbon. The cake was floating in the bourbon. We later found out she mixed even more bourbon into the pudding layer.
She didn’t tell anyone it was alcoholic, so we all got scoops assuming it was a syrup or something. My cousin was the first to bite into it and had to run to the trash can to vomit as soon as it got in her mouth. Another person got a forkful near their nose and freaked out and yelled in shock. Cue my aunt beginning to completely melt down about how she’s trying so hard and she got the recipe from a friend and it’s not THAT much alcohol and grandma was such a good cook she would’ve helped her etc., etc. She was like full blown about to lose it. There was no escape now.
Everyone else was sufficiently guilted into eating at least some of what they’d scooped onto their plates. That stuff was physically painful to eat. Everything burned. Looking around the table, you would’ve thought we were all downing spoonfuls of wasabi. I was 19, but I guess my parents were more worried about my aunt than me getting underage sloshed on pudding. However, about halfway through my portion they found a discreet way to dump my plate. The whole place reeked a couple minutes after we had dug into the “pudding” too, so it was this awful, inescapable sensory overload of bourbon.