My mother likes co-celebrating birthdays and holidays. This April baby was linked with April Fools' Day.

Lucky me.

On my 10th birthday. I blew out the candles and sliced into a luscious angel food cake with chocolate icing. The cake folded in half. Then boinnnnnged into place.

I tried again. Boinnnnng.

Mom had frosted a giant sponge.

Punked by my own parent.

This stunt was beautifully staged, timed and executed. It also was memorable (my sibs are still giggling) and scrumptious (we ate the frosting off the "spongecake").

Mom's one smart cookie. Anyone can pull the old-salt-in-the-sugar bowl stunt on April Fools' Day. Yet it takes cunning and culinary talent to deliver a palatable punchline. As the Irish proverb goes, "Laughter is brightest where food is best." It's a buzz-kill, when a gag leaves everyone gagging.

The key ingredients for a food prank: It should be age-appropriate, fun for all and have an element of surprise, said Joy Howard, assistant editor of FamilyFun magazine. A five-star deceptive dish delivers a double gotcha, "where it's not what it appears to be and the taste is completely different, too," she said.

The Disney magazine's Web site at FamilyFun.com is chock-full of recipes for tricky treats like cookie fish sticks, meat loaf cupcakes and spaghetti and malt balls. Cashew Chicken Stir-Fry is a nutty mix of kid-pleasing fake veggies and real fruit. Dried pineapple chunks masquerade as meat, slices of red and green fruit roll-up as peppers.

The exotic sushi rolls are really bite-size desserts. Rice cereal doubles as the rice, and fruit leather is pressed into service as seaweed "wrappers."

The recipes are simple, so teens can help tykes outfox Mom and Dad, said Howard, who edited the collection of food pranks in the April issue of FamilyFun. Parents can exact sweet revenge, planting a "wormy apple, " a hard-to-open sandwich and bogus snacks in Junior's lunchbox. Few kids expect "to find pranks in their lunch. Then they have the fun of sharing it with their classmates," Howard said.

Some kids never outgrow belly laughs.

The chefs at Moto, in Chicago's West Town neighborhood, elevate pranks to haute cuisine. The World's Smallest Steak Dinner is comprised of a bite of prime rib with a parsnip "bone." The tiny companion spud sports a pea-size blob of bacon ice cream in lieu of sour cream.

Then there's the Cuban Missile Cigar, a ringer for a stogie. The cigar-shaped braised pork sandwich, wrapped in paper-thin bread and a collard green, sports a band and a glowing red tip (red pepper puree). The cigar is served in an ashtray, with a dusting of ashes to complete the illusion.

"The ash is actually Cuban spices ground to look a certain way," executive chef Homaro Cantu said. "We process it with white and black sesame seeds, cinnamon and cloves, star anise and little chili peppers."

Jokes aside, he and his team's goofy senses of humors are coupled with gourmet sensibilities. Taste is the No. 1 criteria. "Every dish served here, people have to remember it for the next 10 years," Cantu said.

Moto's dessert menu is suitably over the top. Pastry chef Ben Roche's tiramisu is a double for a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. One cookie confection resembles a White Castle-sized cheeseburger, with macaroon pinch-hinting for buns, a chocolate patty for the burger, and banana puree for a slice of cheese. "The 'meat' almost has the same texture," Roche said. "Your tongue is like, `What's going on?'"

Gotcha!

Try these rib-sticking, funnybone-tickling recipes for April Fool's Day.

FAUX FISH STICKS

Yum -- cookie fish sticks and tart taffy peas!

Cornflakes

Sugar wafer cookies (2 per person

Peanut butter

Green taffy candy (like green apple AirHeads)

Seedless strawberry jam

DIRECTIONS: For the fish sticks, place a couple of handfuls of cornflakes in a ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Cover 2 sugar wafer cookies with peanut butter, then toss each separately in cornflake crumbs to coat. For the peas, tear off and roll small pieces of the taffy candy into balls. If the taffy is too stiff to work with, microwave it for about 6 seconds. For ketchup, use jam. Stir a few teaspoons until smooth and serve on the side of the fish sticks.

SOURCE: FamilyFun.com

MOCK SUSHI

There's something fishy about these Japanese-style rolls.

1/4 cup butter

4 cups mini marshmallows

6 cups crisped rice cereal

20 to 25 gummy worms (the longer, the better)

1 to 2 boxes of fruit leather

DIRECTIONS: Grease a 12- by 17-inch baking pan. Melt butter in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Add the marshmallows and stir until smooth. Remove mixture from heat and stir in the rice cereal until it's evenly coated. Turn the baking sheet so that the shorter ends are at the top and bottom. Press the marshmallow mixture on the sheet, distributing it evenly. Starting at one side and 1 inch up from the lower edge, place gummy worms atop the mixture end to end in a horizontal line. Gently roll the lower edge of the marshmallow mixture over the gummy worms. Then stop and cut the log away from the rest of the mixture. Use the same method for 4 more logs. Slice each log in 1-inch-thick "sushi" rolls and wrap them individually with a strip of fruit leather.

SOURCE: FamilyFun.com

GAG LUNCH

CAN'T UP-ZIPLOCK BAG

Sandwich

Sandwich bags

Double-sided tape

Hungry April fools will have to wrestle the goods out of one of these special sandwich bags. The reason? The opening is discreetly sealed with a thin line of clear adhesive strip. To set up the prank, zip the bag closed and place a length of double-sided scrapbook tape (like Zips Ultra Thin Clear Adhesive Lines) on one of the flaps just above the closure. Firmly press the flaps together to make them stick.

SOURCE: April issue of FamilyFun magazine

WORMY APPLE

1 apple

1 gummy worm

A worm wiggling from an apple makes an April Fools' Day lunch both silly and sweet. Use a plastic ballpoint pen, washed and with the ink cartridge removed, to bore a hole in the fruit, then insert a gummy worm. (Don't make it the night before, or the worm may get mushy.)

SOURCE: April issue of FamilyFun magazine

SNACK BAG SWITCHEROO

1 snack bag

Baby carrots

Double-sided tape

The joke is that the bag contents don't match the label. Make the switch by carefully opening a snack bag along the top seam. Empty out the original contents and fill the bag with another edible item (we filled a cheese puff bag with baby carrots). Add a playful message such as "April Fool!" Use a strip of double-sided tape to reseal the bag along the seam.

SOURCE: April issue of FamilyFun magazine