Frosting For The Cause is a monumental endeavor by Paula Kelly. It is a full year of posts from bloggers and participants honoring/celebrating/mourning women we all know with cancer, and celebrating them with a baking project. Oh the stories! Oh the yummy recipes! Not only is this project raising awareness but the participants pledge to donate money and baked goods. Please go take a look. This is my contribution. ( I wrote about this recipe once before but it is time for a revisit)

I found out in November, 2010 that my mother had bladder cancer. I was with her in the Dr.’s office when she got the news. She knew right away that she didn’t want any heroic measures but she and her doctors decided that surgery to remove her bladder was a good option for her. It turned out that maybe that wasn’t the best course. I returned to Pennsylvania the end of January of this year to be with her for her surgery. It was a difficult road for her to recover from that surgery. The challenge of learning to deal with her ostomy and the bag that required proved to be too stressful and too difficult. During all that needed to be done in preparing for her surgery, it was discovered that she had some cancer in/on her spine and a suspicious area in her liver. The first few days after her bladder surgery, she and I did the New York Times crossword puzzle as we usually did when we visited together. Soon, it was apparent recovery was not going well. She had much pain and began to lose her ability to walk and stand. We had a succession of family members come and monitor/be advocates for her in the hospital and subsequent nursing care. About 6 weeks after her surgery, her children gathered at her bedside to witness her dying. It was a challenging and beautiful time. I learned much about my mother in those last months of her life.  I spent my whole life watching her struggle with her really non existent weight problem, denying herself the pleasure of eating what she wanted. The last few years of her life, she would say that when she got to age 90, that she would give herself permission to eat whatever she wanted. She died at 89 and the last week she finally gave herself permission to eat dessert and boy did she enjoy it. I always thought she didn’t like chocolate but every day that last week of being conscious and eating she had chocolate frozen yoghurt for lunch and chocolate ripple ice cream for dinner ( and several days, not much else). I am happy she got that chance to indulge. Mom, this chocolate frosting is for you!

Baked Gluten Free Coconut Flour Doughnuts

1/2 cup of coconut flour
1/4 teaspoon of sea salt
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
6 eggs
1/2 cup of honey (or other sweetener)
1 tablespoon of vanilla
1/2 cup of unsalted butter (coconut butter, coconut oil, or regular oil will work as well)

option – add 1 T. of cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, 5 spice powder, or powdered ginger

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. I always sift the coconut flour. Mix together the wet ingredients in another bowl and add to the dry. Mix well. This is when an electric beater comes in handy. You also could use a food processor. One of the tricky things about using coconut flour is that it gets quite lumpy in the process of mixing and requires a bit of effort. If doing it by hand, I recommend using a fork to facilitate the breaking up of the lumps.  Fill the baking pan ( I got my doughnut pan at King Arthur Flours) about 2/3 full. Bake for about 20 minutes in a preheated 350º oven. Let them cool completely and then you either can just lift them out with your fingers or gently use a fork.

There are many options for topping as well as just leaving them plain. I melted some 70% cacao content chocolate, added a few T. of cream and frosted mine. You could make a glaze of powdered sugar and your favorite flavorings (  a bit of orange juice, maple syrup, or vanilla extract). You could glaze them with a bit of honey. Yum!

I live in California and my mom lived and died in Pennsylvania. I so wish I could send these doughnuts to the wonderful nurses and aides who took care of her but the complications and expense of doing that overwhelm me. So instead, I will be offering some donation of cooking time and money to WomenCare of Santa Cruz, Ca. ( http://www.womencaresantacruz.org/index.html) and giving a nice big plate of doughnuts to the daughter of one of my personal chef clients who is having her own struggle with several kinds of cancer. She doesn’t eat gluten and her children love sweets so, a good solution.

I miss you, Mama, and I miss your help with those “darn” crossword puzzles.

I spent the day in the kitchen… cleaning, then cooking, then cleaning, then cooking, then recooking, then cleaning! I made a pie for a friends’ Christmas dinner and some cookies for the neighbor. OK, yes, I had a few, too.  I really cannot resist chocolate and the cookies I made are a wonderful recipe from The Seasons of the Italian Kitchen by Diane Darrow and Tom Maresca.

Spiced Honey Nut Balls

1 oz raisins ( I used currants

2 oz each shelled walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts

1 oz citron, finely chopped ( I used homemade candied lemon peel after discovering that the storebought citron is full of high fructose corn syrup!)

1 oz semi sweet chocolate chips

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg

4 T honey

1/2c. plus 2 T flour ( I used whole wheat)

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Put the raisins in a small bowl and add hot water to soften ( I used Marsala wine. why not?) Put the nuts on a baking sheet, keeping the hazelnuts to one side. Toast in the oven 5 minutes ( mine needed more, just watch them). Remove and rub the hazelnuts in a clean rough towel to remove as much of the skin as possible. Chop all the nuts together finely ( or pulse in the food processor).Put them in a large bowl. Drain the raisins and squeeze them lightly, and add to the bowl along with the ingredients through the nutmeg. Mix well. Mix the honey with 1 T hot water to loosen its consistency, and add to the fruit nut mixture. Sift on the flour and mix well. Oil or butter a cookie sheet. Break off bits of dough, roll them between buttered palms into balls about 2 inches in diameter. Set the balls on the baking sheet, put in the oven, and immediately turn the temperature down to 350º. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until they are golden brown. Cool on a rack. When they are completely cooled, they can be stored in an airtight container for several weeks. ( yeah, good luck with that!!)

My other culinary adventure today was French Silk Pie as blogged beautifully by my friend Amy Casey here. If you are not familiar with her, please become so. She consistently posts great recipes and photographs. The photo here is before topping with Grand Marnier flavored whipped cream. mmmm.

Chocolate is the food of love and today was about giving my friends and neighbors some chocolate love, as well as myself.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my favorite barred chocolate, though I didn’t use it today. Please go to http://www.shamanchocolates.com and read about this wonderful company. If your local store does not carry it, you can order on line.