Thanksgiving approaches and it’s time for my annual mash-up of recipes and charity. This is our eighth year of offering the five top "By Request" recipes of the year as a benefit for the Star-Advertiser’s Good Neighbor Fund, which provides aid to families in need.

You send me five bucks, I send you five recipes, the best of those printed in this column in 2014. All the money goes to the fund — an amount that has totaled more than $10,000 every year.

THE TOP 5 RECIPES

» Kapalama School Peanut Butter Coffee Cake: Lucky kids at this elementary school got to eat this tender treat that’s like a peanut butter cookie in cake form. Thanks go to Jade Tom, former Kapalama baker, for sending the recipe. After it ran in the paper, I learned that some schools served the cake with a crunchy topping, so the recipe has been updated to add a streusel topping.

» Old-Fashioned Hamburger Steak With Brown Gravy and Grilled Onions: Albert Uehara, a cook at New Liberty Grill, helped me with this recipe, a classic version of the plate-lunch staple. We couldn’t match Liberty’s exact recipe (for one thing, the gravy used a stock made from the restaurant’s leftover bones, so the right combination would be elusive). But this is a great recipe for those who love hamburger steak.

» Chicken With Lychee Sauce: Despite my substantial lifetime experience eating in Chinese restaurants, I had never had this dish. Too bad for me. It’s a fabulous sweet-sour dish with a bit of spice that proves how well fruit can work in a savory combination. To make it you’ve got to marinate, deep-fry and stir-fry, but it’s worth it.

» Woolworth’s Chocolate Dobash Cake: Light and lovely but packed with chocolate punch, this cake rivals anything you can get at a local bakery. The recipe hails from the old F.W. Woolworth lunch counter, which may have been where this local specialty originated.

» Kahuku High School Cherry Crisp: It could take some hunting on your part to secure the special ingredient critical to this dessert: canned red tart cherries. But the results will be worth it. The recipe was donated by an anonymous reader who graduated from Kahuku High School in 1959, where she was a member of Future Homemakers of America.

HOW TO ORDER

Send $5 per set of 5 recipes, along with a self-addressed, stamped, legal-size (4-by-9-inch) envelope for each set. Extra donations to the fund are welcome, but please be clear how many sets of recipes you want and how much is a pure donation.

The deadline to order is Dec. 26.

Make checks payable to the Good Neighbor Fund. Mail orders to:

By Request Top Recipes
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210
Honolulu, HI 96813