Sweet on honey

Everywhere I turn this week, there have been sweets. Good sweets.

Not the tired pastries languishing on trays beside vats of big-hotel coffee, or the generic boxed cookies put out at low-rent art openings. These sorts of token treats are easy to pass up. Which is good, since I gave up refined sugar and cane sugar (white sugar in disguise, IMHO) for May.

Harder to resist are the gooey, delicious sweets I conjure up when I’m craving the best sorts of desserts. And, now that I’ve given up sugar, it’s those mouth-watering temptations that keep appearing before me.

Like the cake that called to me from the sideboard at Cayo’s house last week. Cayo is one of the best cooks I know. She once ran a restaurant in Adams Morgan, but more importantly, she cooks and bakes with intention. Though we’ve never discussed this, I am sure that, as she cooks, she thinks of the people she will be feeding, and because of that mindfulness the dishes she puts together become lovely gifts to share with family and friends.

It’s the same thing as putting something of yourself into whatever it is you’re doing. When Tyler was maybe four years old, and we were making cookies or some such kitchen project together, we oooohed and aaahed about how delicious they were, and talked about how they had the “special Tyler touch.”Okay, how corny is that? But it sounds great to a four-year-old, who thinks that he has some sort of magic to create something so good. And then, he does.

Just like Cayo.

Which is why the chocolate cake sitting on her sideboard was so hard to resist. Not only was it beautiful to look at, a deep, dark chocolate stack of at least two layers (I couldn’t look too closely), studded with chocolate kisses and oozing with chocolate frosting. It was also a birthday cake for her daughter (18!!), which makes it that much more alluring.

But I said no, thank you. I’m off sugar for just a month. I figure, I’ve got the rest of my life for chocolate cake, and if I can’t resist for one month, any discipline I thought I had is completely shot.

The other major temptation this week appeared on a plate at book club, from our generous hostess, Ellen. Cupcakes. These were not grocery store dreck, obligatory snacks served because it was her turn to host. They were from Curbside Cupcakes, one of the portable food trucks that travel around D.C., park, and create an exodus of hungry people escaping the city’s office buildings for something good to eat, served out of (surprise!) a truck. Like the Good Humor Ice Cream truck, but for grownups, Curbside attracts long lines of people who order up classic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes or more unusual combinations like vanilla with raspberry icing, carrot cake and peanut butter cup. They are decadent; the mocha at Ellen’s looked especially good.

Again, I resisted.

But I do have a confession. All this resistance is made easier due to the pretty phenomenal substitutes I’ve found for the usual white sugar treats. Starting with Mother’s Day, when Clara inspired me with miniature, sugar-free muffins, I poked around ‘til I found a honey-sweetened recipe for berry muffins that was quite good. There are plenty of other, easier sugarless-but-sweet options, too: fruit with yogurt and honey or agave, maple syrup on pancakes with berries or bananas, fruit-only jam on toast. When you allow for all those other sweeteners, life, is still pretty sweet.

Another favorite: a big schmear of Really Raw Honey on bread and butter. The Baltimore-produced honey, a thick, opaque spread, is so good that, the first time I bought it, the cashier at the food co-op warned me that it’s so addictive she eats it by the spoonful. I feel good about this indulgence, though, because it has bee pollen in it: energizing and healthy.

More unusual is the trail mix I’ve come up with: sweet raisins with whatever nuts are around (walnuts or pecans, usually) and bitter cacao nibs, the little flakes of ground up cacao shells. Yum. And, it’ll give you a kick when the afternoon slump is setting in.

But the best sugar-free sweet treat thus far is so good it really shouldn’t be allowed and does make me question whether eating all these yummy snacks is legit. The secret to this one? Powdered cocoa. Which has no sugar if you buy it in the can for baking. I wound up with Ghirardelli brand, since the day I bought it I happened to be in Whole Foods, and they had no (much cheaper) Hershey’s.

So here’s the recipe, if you want to call it that: Put raisins & walnuts into a favorite bowl, sprinkle a teaspoon or two of cocoa on top, drizzle on some honey, and add a couple teaspoons of cream. Stir it up for a while – at first the cocoa will be powdery but eventually it all incorporates into something that is awfully close to a candy bar you can eat with a spoon.

Suddenly a month with no refined sugar seems delicious.