Let Us Break Cake Together, On Our Knees

First off, I mean nothing sacrilegious by the title I have given this piece. I'd written something else, originally. As I left to join my community group for the evening, I began humming "let us break bread together on our knees," a song laden with a feeling of family and many fond memories. As I was bringing cake.... well, you see where I went with it. With every community group I have been a part of, the question has always arisen... before we start getting into His word - what are we going to eat? There's just something about breaking bread, or cake, or chip and dip, or whatever together that encourages fellowship - so this issue of the meal, or even just a snack, always needs resolution.

In our group a few pot luck, smorgasborg things have been tried. We have now committed ourselves to the sign-up sheet whereupon each family takes it upon themselves to bring the goodies for that week's gathering. There are a lot of us, usually at least 20 adults, so this is no small sacrifice for the giver. But it seems to work for us. Everyone is very thankful for whatever is brought, and there are long stretches of time before it is your turn again.

Tonight is my turn. Which has translated into Luisa being given the arduous task of making a carrot cake yesterday while I was out for a good portion of the day on errands. (She would much rather be given the assignment of simply grating carrots, but Angelina was busy making her first cheesecake for the family - white chocolate raspberry. She's a mini-Quentin.) So with recipe in hand, my little Lu turned out a very nice cake! In our family, nobody is exempt from cooking - except for Roman the magician who mysteriously and consistently disappears when this routine task arises. He's the dishwasher.

Today, Angelina is in bed, sick. So Luisa and I have been finishing the rest of the fixins for tonight. I made a classic cream cheese frosting for the carrot cake to begin with. Then, we attempted an apple cake that could only have been created in the South. This thing is guaranteed to give you a cavity if you do not brush immediately afterwards. The cake itself may be a rather standard (if sugar heavy) recipe, but once it was taken from the oven the directions instructed us to have a sauce composed of 1 cup brown sugar, 1 stick of butter, and 1/4 cup of milk ready to pour over the hot cake and let it rest for an hour. This we did. What I didn't do was bake it in a flute pan, so my intricately designed bundt pat held on fast to all that sticky sweetness and we wound up with a cake that wouldn't let loose - well half of it wouldn't, and half of it did. So, this baby will be staying home to be eaten with vanilla ice-cream, having proven itself unfit for public presentation. Ah well.....

It's a good thing I also had Luisa help me make a chocolate banana cake. We decided a sweet and tangy chocolate cream cheese frosting recipe would set it off perfectly. And in keeping with our readings on prayer by Paul Miller, I find it fitting to offer a child's prayer here:

Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the friends we meet.
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything. Amen