I was going to blog about the great, delicious crab-mushroom cakes I made the other day, but then this happened.  My good friend Shirley from Gluten free easily talked about her banana Kaluha coconut cake, complete with picture and everything.

Well, I felt this incredible pull tugging on me and sure enough before I knew it I was back in the kitchen.  I had to smile to myself. Dr. Tae Yun Kim always reminds us that we need to be flexible, and not just physically.  When your environment changes, when the situation changes,Dr. Tae Yun Kim says, we have to change according to the situation.

Dr. Dr. Tae Yun Kim illustrated this with a story: one of her students had planned a cruise to the Bahamas for a long time, and was all packed and ready and beyond excited.  However, the day she was about to travel to the port of departure, a hurricane was forming and there were already travel warnings going out.  Rather than cancel, she still went ahead, because she had already paid for the cruise and didn’t want to just cancel.  Within a day or two of the cruise, the hurricane manifested in all it’s nastiness, and not only did the travelers have to get off the ship in a hurry, they were also stuck for almost a week at a hurricane stricken island, with minimal food, water and worries about the storm.  Not an ideal vacation!

While granted, my situation wasn’t nearly that drastic, I still didn’t mind changing direction, and went ahead to make this delicious looking cake.  I mean, it was a good excuse to make that cake, right?

Fresh out of the oven…..

Here is the original recipe, go check it out!

I could already taste the cake, while I was mixing the ingredients together.  What aroma!  What smooth batter!  I did make a minor change  – I used double the amount, so I could bake it in my bundt pan, and I substituted – for the double recipe – 2 cups almond flour, and for the rest used Shirley’s gluten-free flour mix.

When I reached for the coconut, to add that to the batter, I couldn’t believe it.  None there!  Impossible!  I knew I had 3 bags!  Someone, who for the sake of peace in the household will remain unnamed, had thrown it out because “a mouse had gotten into each bag.”  Hmmmmm.

Once again I thought if a very fitting quote from Dr. Kim – don’t carve in your emotions – instead, let them flow away like water, and get rid of all negative feelings!

Ok, but what to put in the batter instead?  In checking out the pantry, I saw a nice jar of Nutella sitting there, and without much thought started to spoon in gobs of Nutella into the batter, which now looked a little too thin, and I added another 3/4 cup or so of almond flour.  and about one cup of Nutella total.

I put that into the bundt pan and baked this experiment at 350 for about 45 – 50 minutes.

The result was out of this world!  As in, so good it was unbelievable.

And this brought back to mind another gem ofv Dr. Tae Yun Kim’s sayings (quote from “The Silent Master”)

“Clinging to a good picture you have created possibly keeps you from expanding into an even greater good.  Clinging to a disagreeable picture keeps you there!  So, don’t hold on to either as though it is the final story.  You don’t hate, resent, fight, or quarrel with an undesirable situation, and you don’t overly love or cling to a desirable situation.  Detachment means you are always ready, open, and willing to experience change.  That is how you develop.”