WAILUKU, Maui — When she was a young girl, Cathy Nobriga could consume a quart of ice cream without stopping and, she smilingly recalls, without any noticeable effect on her trim figure.

Her father, ice cream maker David "Buddy" Nobriga, owner of what was then called Maui Soda & Ice Works, took note. "He figured if I could eat that much ice cream, I must like what I was doing," she recalls. So Nobriga steered his only daughter (he also has four sons) along a career course that would take her where he thought she belonged: into the mixing and tasting rooms.

Today, Cathy Nobriga Kim, 51, is vice president of production, charged with creating and testing new flavors and marketing the ice cream that goes by the name the elder Nobriga gave it in 1970, Roselani Tropics Ice Cream. In the past 37 years, Roselani has developed a flourishing commercial and custom business and expanded its retail market to all the main islands.

But, says Kim, business wasn't on her mind when she developed Aloha Cherry Truffle. It's the first flavor that she's created for charity — proceeds of the new ice cream will benefit the Memorial Medical Center Foundation's fund for breast cancer awareness and education.

During October, which is Breast Cancer Month, the Foundation and Roselani have conducted an informational campaign in conjunction with the release of the company's first new ice cream flavor in three years, sold in a specially designed 56-ounce carton. In addition, Maui chefs developed recipes for dessert specials built around the rosy pink ice cream.

Kim, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2006, said what she calls her "ordeal" wasn't her motivation for designing the ACT Sweet campaign.

"I didn't do this because I had breast cancer or because we had a 75th anniversary to celebrate, although both those things are true," said Kim, who is married and the mother of three.

It was because after years of serving on the state Health Planning and Development Agency and the Maui Memorial Medical Center board of directors, and recently being appointed to the state Hawai'i Health System board of directors, she had become acutely aware of how many women cannot afford regular breast cancer screenings, or don't understand its importance. And even if disadvantaged women are diagnosed, it can be difficult for them to find the best treatment without insurance.

"Our message is that breast cancer is a nondiscriminatory disease. It's also a preventable/curable one and early detection is the key. I'm living proof," said Kim.

A recent survey showed that most of the women in Maui County who are being diagnosed with breast cancer are in their 50s and 60s and are often at an advanced stage of the disease, when survival rates drop precipitately.

Other factors play a role, too: sensitivity about the part of the body involved, fear of pain, fear of hearing bad news. Even something simple, such as having no place to leave young children during a mammogram or having to choose between paying the electricity bill and paying the doctor, can be a barrier.

So Kim decided to pair a happy idea with a scary topic. Could the pleasures of ice cream help introduce the the idea of breast cancer awareness?

Not only are sales of Aloha Cherry Truffle providing money for assistance and education for women, but ice cream tends to be a food around which people's barriers come down.

Kim believes ice cream's popularity goes beyond the pleasant flavor and silky texture: "I think the secret is that you relive a period of your life when things were simple and you were innocent and everything was safe ... and you can just go back there with that little bowl and a spoon."

So how does Kim come up with a new ice cream flavor?

She's not much of a cook, she says, but she loved to bake as a young girl and baking and ice cream-making have a lot in common. Both are a formula-based science. Once you understand the master recipes and the play and balance that has to exist between ingredients, you can experiment.

Kim, with journeyman advice from her father, knows what she can and cannot do to retain the desired texture and depth of flavor and still meet the manufacturing process's technical requirements.

Beyond that, she is, like her dad, kind of a purist: "I don't like too much stuff in my ice cream. When you do that, it's not ice cream anymore. Ice cream was never meant to be chewed."

She subscribes to food magazines for inspiration, but often finds herself reworking older ideas from the handwritten files of her grandfather, the late company founder Manuel Nobriga. Pauwela Sunrise, an orange "dreamcicle" ice cream with pineapple chunks, is a version of his long-ago Golden Glow ice cream.

In creating Aloha Cherry Truffle, she started with another popular flavor from years past, one which many customers have requested: black cherry. The pink hue of the ice cream matched the theme color of the national fight against breast cancer.

But she wanted something more. What do women love for comfort? Chocolate. But solid chocolate can be tricky on an ice cream production line.

In typical Maui kokua style, she networked with pastry chef instructor Teresa "Cheech" Shurilla and her students in Maui Community College's culinary program, who developed a recipe for a creamy chocolate sauce that could be swirled through the cherry truffle.

Once she's dreamed up a flavor, Kim runs a small 3-gallon batch, tinkering until she's satisfied, and then taste-tests it at independent Maui scooping parlors. The first time she ran Aloha Cherry Truffle, around Valentine's Day, the shops sold out of all 33 tubs. It was the first time that has happened.

Kim said that, since her diagnosis (she had a lumpectomy and radiation and so far has not had a reoccurrence), she's stepped up her exercise and watches what she eats.

But, she said, "I haven't stopped eating ice cream."

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.