• 1 package (15.25 oz) of yellow cake mix

• 1 package (3.5 oz) of vanilla pudding

• 4 eggs

• ½ cup of dark rum - Make it a cup and a half.

• ½ cup of vegetable oil Your Cousin Janice will try to use coconut oil. Sean, do not let her. I hate that stuff!

• ½ cup of water

• Chopped walnuts Not in my cake!

Go ahead and measure out an extra cup of rum. You will want it later. Trust me.

Step One: Grease a bundt pan.

Step Two: Mix the dry ingredients. Sean, do not use the stand mixer for this! You will throw cake mix all over my kitchen. And I know you will not clean it up.

Step Three: Beat the eggs and slowly add the vegetable oil, water, and rum. Do not add the rum yet. The recipe does not know what it is talking about. I will tell you when to add the rum… when the time is perfect!

Step Four: Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix thoroughly. If you overmix this, Sean, you will ruin Christmas. Again.

Step Five: Add walnuts. Absolutely not.

Step Six: Gather the extended family around the table. As you pour the batter into the greased bundt pan, all chant together, “Life as in death, batter as in cake, first to last breath, dessert I shall make.”

Step Seven: Watch in horror as the batter starts to boil, though there is no heat source.

Step Eight: Good god! What is that thing emerging from the cake mix? As the batter drips away from its hideous form, you realize it is a skeleton! All bones except for its large unblinking eyeballs and clumps of hair still attached to the skull.

Step Nine: The monster is trying to speak, but when it opens its mouth flames instead of words go shooting out. The whole dining room is on fire! Someone, turn off the smoke detector, please. The beeping is unbearable.

Step Ten: What is that smell? It is so familiar. In fact, you could almost swear it is the scent of Aunt Anne’s hand cream.

Step Eleven: Now everything makes sense. The skeleton with unblinking eyeballs and fire shooting from its mouth is not a monster at all! It was Aunt Anne the whole time. Here she is, returned from the dead, for Christmas dinner. What is that in her hands? Oh, how thoughtful! It is one of her famous rum cakes. Thanks Aunt Anne.

Do you still have that rum you saved from the recipe? Now it is time to use it. Give it to me.

Glug glug glug.

You have your cake and I have my rum. My soul is at peace. Well, I will just take this horrifying assemblage of bones and hellfire back to the afterlife with me. See you next Christmas, assuming Sean does not mess up the recipe I left you.