This simple soufflé will knock your socks off and your teeth out.

Ingredients

1 cup butter for 1 cup shortening

“Shortening,” despite the name, is not what happens when you try to decrease your height by standing funny. It actually refers to this solid fat thing. In a pinch, simply substitute with butter from your fridge. The more you know!

3 tbsp. almond butter for 3 tbsp. peanut butter

Nut, legume, same difference. These taste more similar than you may think, especially after being cooked. An ancient scroll I found in a place I dare not name spoke of an allergy against nuts insidiously snaking its way through my family line, but if you listen to every ancient scroll you find, you’ll go mad. At least that’s what the voices say.

1 cup powdered sugar for 1 cup brown sugar

Brown sugar is great, but if you haven’t got any, adding in some white, powdery goodness is A-okay. Oh, wrong white powder. You know what? That’s probably fine.

5 lb. limburger cheese for ½ cup milk

A few pounds of limburger is sure to give your recipe an unforgettable kick! Chewy, aged, ripe, hard milk is still milk.

1 bar kosher soap for 1 tsp kosher salt

Simply rub your wet hands all over the bar, then plunge them into the pan/pot/bowl. This works! Soap cleanses the outside of your mortal form, so it really ought to do numbers for your innards.

370 teeth for 4 cups flour

Running low on flour? Head to your drawer of human teeth, feed a few hundred through the nearest paper shredder and dump the resulting grind in the pot. This will work, and anyone who says anything to you about completing the first step in an ancient ritual designed to awaken the goat king from his eternal slumber is lying.

1 tsp. black acrylic paint for 1 tsp vanilla extract

I can confirm that drinking huge amounts of either of these makes you feel very funny, so they’re probably equivalent.

1 gallon of all-encompassing despair over the inevitable fate of our doomed world for 1 lifetime of love

I know, I know, everyone says it tastes better if you make it with love, but if you make it with crushing despair, most people can’t tell the difference. Besides, can people really expect us to make stuff with love in this economy? My forefathers might be rolling in their graves, but I’m rolling my eyes at the thought of ever finding a single tantalizing sliver of happiness or companionship in this cold, dark, lonely world.

5 tbsp. 5W-40 motor oil for 5 good shakes of ranch dressing

The motor oil is an improvement.

1 live chicken for 1 large egg

Worrying about philosophical problems? Don’t. Chicken, egg — neither came first ‘cause both are the same. This is also why you can skip actually cooking anything. Just serve people bowls of random ingredients. It’s basically the same thing. People eat sashimi anyways, which is literally a live fish as far as I’m concerned.

2 pinches arsenic for 2 pinches nutmeg

This one is recommended for your enemies.

2 pinches nutmeg for 2 pinches arsenic

In case they’re not your enemy.

1 electric mixer for 1 tsp. salt

Assert your dominance by consuming household appliances. You wanna break down when I need you, mixer? How about I break YOU.

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350°.

Step 2

Combine ingredients in a bowl, pot, cauldron or generally leakproof, concave object.

Step 3

Transfer into a tin.

Step 4

Put it in the oven.

Step 5

Wait for between 10 minutes and four episodes of a podcast about turning your life around.

Step 6

Throw the whole thing out — it didn’t rise. FUCK. Is this the moment they spoke of? The moment where the curse of your forebears approaches its unspeakable peroration? The phantasms in your dreams were right. Existence is meaningless. All tremble before the enormity of space and time. Tears pool in your eyes, racing down your cheeks, only to plop into the soupy garbage mess that is — was — your soufflé.

Step 7

Contemplate the banality of your small existence.

Step 8

Eat another electric mixer.

Step 9

Pull out all your teeth.

Step 10

Take a bite. Oh, it’s pretty good. Mmmm, you can really taste the nutmeg. The motor oil coats your tongue like a French kiss. Black paint drool leaves your lips. Inhale the scent of gourmet live chicken — earthy, farmy, raw, real. As you move the spoon to your lips, your hand trembles with anticipation, one more bite, and — love, you’ve found it. Bliss.