chocolate pine cones became chocolate vanilla brazil cones

The cookbook "Cast Iron Cuisine: From Breakfast to Dessert" has a dessert recipe called Chocolate Pine Cones.

I deviated from that recipe in three different ways.

First, this recipe is made from scratch. I have not yet graduated to making cakes from scratch, so I used chocolate cake mix.

Second, this recipe calls for ground up jicama, soaked in creme de cacao, a chocolate liqueur.

I didn't have any, but I did have some vanilla, so that's what I used. So now it would be chocolate vanilla pine cones.

Jicama is a root vegetable, found in the produce section. It looks like a huge round ginger root.

You need a food processor to grind it up, or you'll be grating or chopping for a long, long time.

And third, pine nuts are very expensive, so I decided to use brazil nuts. So now it would be chocolate vanilla brazil cones!

Pine nuts are small enough that they don't need to be ground.

Brazil nuts can be crushed in a bag with a hammer. They're too soft to be properly ground in a food processor; They become "powder".

I made the chocolate cake batter, and added the soaked ground jicama and the ground brazil nuts. Into the oven at 400.

This recipe was meant to be baked in cornstick pans. I had enough batter to fill up both my cornstick pans, and the cornbread wedge pan.

So, some are cones, and some are wedges.

The ground jicama definitely makes a difference in texture and taste, as opposed to cake with nuts.

I'm sure the actual recipe is fantastic. This was very modified, but still quite tasty.