Our Sunday Treat — Chocolate Coconut Doughnut Bites

The Computer Guy and I decided to go Paleo for Lent. For those who aren’t familiar with a Paleo diet, here’s a link explaining it. We are pretty hard core carb addicts, and sugar junkies. While I’ve tried to kick the habit on my own in the past, this time he’s doing it with me! (I hope the group effort helps!)

While we’ve done pretty well since Ash Wednesday (a whole 4 days!), I was dreading Sunday. It’s kinda our thing on Sundays after Mass to take the kids out for doughnuts. While Sundays are never fasting days, I was afraid that changing our new habits on Sundays would undermine everything we were trying to achieve.

Which means that I did the only thing I could do, I made up a paleo recipe for doughnut holes. (I guess you could make whole doughnuts out of them, but I don’t have a pan for that.) They turned out way better than I could have hoped! They satisfied the whole family’s sweet cravings, and even those of us who aren’t huge chocolate fans liked them.  That’s a win in my book!

Here’s how they ended up looking:

Yum!

Here’s how I did it:

Chocolate Coconut Doughnut Bites

Ingredients:

Doughnuts
3 bananas (the ripe kind you’d use for banana bread)
1/4 cup raisins
1/8 cup honey
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract (plus a splash…really almost double…I always add extra vanilla…don’t you?)
3/4 cup coconut flour
3 tsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup coconut oil, melted

Icing
 1 1/2 oz dark chocolate (that’s half a bar of Ghirardelli) make sure it’s the kind with no sugar. I used 86% cacao
1 tbsp coconut butter
1 1/2 tsp coconut crystals (it’s coconut sugar, don’t let the name fool you. It’s also totally optional if you like your chocolate really dark)
Unsweetened shredded coconut to sprinkle on the top

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Grease inside of mini muffin pan. (If you don’t have a mini muffin pan, use the regular kind and just adjust the cooking time longer.)
3. Put bananas, honey, and raisins in food processor and blend until smooth. (I don’t have a food processor. I have an old blender we use to make smoothies and alcoholic beverages. It worked just fine.)
4.  Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth.
5. Pour batter into muffin pan. 
6. Bake for 10 minutes or until cooked all the way through. (Test it with a toothpick. Stick a toothpick through one and if it comes out clean, they’re done!)
7. Let them cool all the way! (If you don’t, they will fall apart.)
8. Once they’re cool, melt the chocolate in a bowl.
9. Mix in butter and crystals. Stir to combine.
10. Dip the top of each bit in the chocolate. (If you want to coat the whole thing, double the icing recipe.)
11. Sprinkle with shredded coconut.
12. Either eat them now, or let the chocolate harden a bit. Either way, Yum!