I Ate Magnolia Bakery’s ‘Birds of Prey’ Banana Puddin’

ScreenCrush editor-in-chief Matt Singer loves movies and has an unhealthy fascination with food inspired by movies. These are his stories.

Today’s Food: Pink Puddin’, inspired by Birds of Prey, from Magnolia Bakery.

The Movie Food’s Official Description: In partnership with Warner Brothers, we’re celebrating the new Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn movie with a banana pudding fit for only Harley Quinn. Our Pink Puddin’ is our classic banana pudding layered with bright pink confetti cake in honor of the colorful character.

What Matt Actually Ate:

The Verdict: They weren’t screwing around with the pink, huh? The description promised “bright pink,” and brother, they weren’t kidding. This thing is the pinkest pink I’ve ever seen. It is pink. Absolutely nothing has that color naturally. So of course I ate it.

Although Magnolia’s claim to fame is cupcakes, regular costumers know they also make excellent banana pudding. So if you are hunting around for places to do tie-in food with Birds of Prey — which stars a character, Harley Quinn, whose affectionate nickname for the Joker is “Puddin’” — it’s pretty much either Jell-O or Magnolia. And, with all due respect to Jell-O pudding, Magnolia’s product is tastier.

As for the actual pudding — excuse me, puddin’ — it’s exactly as advertised: Magnolia’s standard banana pudding with the ‘g’ replaced by pink cake. The cake itself didn’t bring a vastly different flavor to the cup; basically everything tasted like banana no matter what was on my spoon. But the cake was extremely moist, which is important in a dessert like this. The Pink Puddin’ was also the sweetest thing I’d ever put in my mouth — at any moment, I feel like my teeth might just leap out of my mouth in protest. But assuming you like extremely sweet desserts and things that are so pink it actively hurts your eyes to look at them for more than a second or two, you’ll enjoy this.

As you can see from my pictures, the portion I got was way more cake than pudding; the poster in the Magnolia window promised pudding with flecks of cake, and mine was really the reverse of that. But I also got a smaller cup because that was all they had when I went in; presumably a larger portion (they sell medium or large in case you really like desserts inspired by the effervescent screen presence of Margot Robbie) would feature a more even mix of pudding and cake.

Does This Food Properly Reflect the Movie? Yes it does — at least by the extremely low standards established by these sorts of tie-ins. Is it kind of perverse to make a dessert based on the fact that a sociopathic criminal calls her serial killer boyfriend puddin’? Absolutely — but that’s exactly the kind of perverse that jives with the tone of Birds of Prey. Harley’s also a very flamboyant dresser, with an eclectic and extremely bright fashion sense, so the radioactive pink color definitely seems like something she would like. And it didn’t taste bad at all.

All in all, that adds up to a successful movie tie-in. And Magnolia actually does ship this stuff if you want to try it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to brush my teeth for an hour.

Gallery — Every DC Comics Movie Ranked From Worst to Best: