Chicken Not-Pie

April Fool's 2010 can be counted as a success! Don't you love the look on your husband's face when he just put something in his mouth that he was not expecting. I love trying to find a good food fool for at least one of our meals on April Fool's Day. Last year it was ice cream sundaes that took on the appearance of taco salad bowls followed by a meatloaf with mashed potatoes that looked like an iced sheet cake. Yes, both the food and the order of food last year had to do with April Fool's. This year I was planning to do another main dish and a dessert but time just got away from me. Plus, logistically I figure that if they already know the prank for the first part of the meal it kind of takes the fun out of the second part and it's a bit of work to connive and plan in secret and pull these things off.

This year I found a website that had many, many, many (did I already say many) fun ideas on ways to dress up your meal for April Fool's. Some were dinners, some were breakfasts, but most were desserts that were made to look like breakfast and dessert. By the way, even though the breakfast pranks look really fun I still have yet to make one. There is something that feels inherently wrong about serving my family pound cake for what is supposed to be one of their healthiest meals of the day. You could surmise that we don't have any sugary breakfast cereals hanging around our pantry and you'd be correct.

Let me introduce you to this year's April Fool's food prank, Chicken Not-Pies!

It might look like an uninteresting, completely bland and boring chicken pot-pie, but au contraire. It still has a flaky pie crust for the top, just like a regular pot-pie but the filling is where we steer away from the norm. Instead of a gravy base with chicken, peas, carrots, corn, and potatoes, we have a vanilla pudding base with candy and fruit pieces mixed in. The chicken is replaced with pieces of white chocolate bar, the corn and carrots are shaped pieces of starburst, the peas are shaped pieces of jolly rancher chews, and the potatoes are small pieces of bananas.

You might be thinking, okay that looks neat but I bet it tastes terrible. I thought the same thing but it is surprisingly good. It's not like creme brulee or anything (which by the way I have never made nor eaten so I wouldn't technically know what it tastes like), but it is pleasantly nice. The veggies are a bit chewy for my taste but the flavors actually mixed pretty well. A bite consisted of a bit of crust, a bit of pudding, and a bit of fruit flavor. Not too bad once you got used to the chewy vegetables. Maybe if vegetables always came in this form more kids wouldn't have an aversion to eating them!

If you want the recipe you can click the link here. There are many other fun fake-out foods to peruse as well. Enjoy!