Playing Dirty

Every holiday season for the past 10 years, my Mother and I have had a dessert contest. Why the 2 worst cooks in the family decided to do this, I still have no idea. (Our culinary skills were about even since I couldn't manage to remove the cardboard before baking a frozen pizza and Mom usually announced dinner was ready by the fire alarm going off when she forgot about the bread in the oven). However, year after year, our family nervously takes a bite of our sugary concoction and places their vote.

I say "nervously" for good reason. You see, between the two of us, something inevitably goes wrong with our dessert, so the winner is usually the one with the least-offending entry. For instance, there was the year I took a stab at a Peppermint Chocolate Cake. (It would have been great if I had crushed the peppermint pieces a bit finer so that family members did not break their teeth.) That year, Mom entered a French Silk Pie that she decided to "tweak" with extra rich chocolate. No one could actually cut the pie because it was so hard, that my peppermint monstrosity won that year. Let's see...there was the time my pumpkin roll didn't exactly roll, and I mashed it in a bowl and called it "Pumpkin Surprise." Another bad year was when Mom added dried up cherries to a box cake. *shivers* And so on, and so on...

This year, we invited my little sister in on the fun, and the good times started rolling. Amy made a Tres Leches Cake, I made Red Velvet Cake Balls and Mom made Crockpot Chocolate Pudding.





Since Mom's dessert was smelling fabulous, Amy and I had to try to discourage people from wanting to try hers:



(Too bad I spelled "turd" wrong. That's embarrassing for a teacher with an English degree.) Who would want to eat turd pudding? Mom didn't seem impressed with my efforts and retorted that no one would want my "balls," either. (Yes, my mother said that.)

Not to be outdone, Mom also tried to liquor up the judges:




In the end, though, the Crockpot Chocolate Pudding won by one vote. I will be speaking to my disloyal in-laws about this.

Who knows what we'll concoct for next year. And, if our concoction doesn't fare well, we've got 10 years of sabotaging practice. And no shame.