Coffee, Salt and Light, and the Essence and Use of the Christian (Matthew 5:13-16)

Buoyed by great waves of enthusiasm, we stopped at Papa Palheta for a refuel between bible study and dinner that night. The Terra Firma blend was indeed bootylicious, complex with long palate, as advertised, unfairly disadvantaging the Sulawesi Today, Tomorrow, Toraja that came after.

A bag of Terra Firma, ground on the spot with the dial at 5.5, for the stovetop, was delicious stuff; a beacon of light amongst the soured drainwater of big chain coffeehouses. The steady stream of caffeine fiends even without any real attempt at publicity bore testimony. It did not hurt that onsite, there were, outside: wooden benches and black metal chairs and tables and fluffball kittens who stalked you until you acquiesced and rubbed their little soft tummies; and inside: comfy sofas and vintage fittings and friendly fellow-imbibers who educated you that poker was now the game of choice amongst males of a certain set. Should have known eh, Lady Gaga.

There is much talk nowadays, post-9/11, post-AWARE saga, of the role of Christians in society. Jesus' take is:

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-16)

Much ink has been squirted, squid-like, on the subject of salt: ah, Christians as salt act as preservatives, preventing putrification and decay, keeping morals untouched in this rotten world; or Christians are the antiseptic to the infective germs of the evil in this world; or Christians purify the world because wasn't that the use of salt in the Old Testament?; or Christians are valuable because in ancient times, salt was used as currency etc.

But the user of a metaphor usually employs it with a certain characteristic in mind. And Jesus seems less concerned by the specific uses of salt than the need for salt to retain its essence - the saltiness that makes it salt (Matthew 5:13).

This is a warning then to Christians that if they do not retain their essence of being Christians, they will be useless for anything and be thrown out of the kingdom (Matthew 5:13). And what is the Christian to be used for? Jesus says that Christians are meant to be the light of the world, shining before others so that others may see their good works and give glory to God the Father who is in heaven (Matthew 5:14-16).

What is the essence of a Christian then? If you boil him down to his core, what is the distinctive residue you are meant to find sticking to the pot? Perhaps contrary to popular belief, a Christian is not defined by the Nobel Peace Prize-worthy mercy relief of Mother Teresa, the early political agitation for human rights by William Wilberforce, or lobby groups that ensure that conservative morals continue to be upheld by the law of the land. Healing the sick, relieving the suffering of the poor and oppressed and abused, preserving God's design in the world are, in their fashion, good things. But there are many voluntary welfare organisations who too hold to "conservative" value and are also concerned with the poor, the sick, the needy (and also the animals and Mother Earth). While these may be (necessary) outworkings of the Christian's distinctiveness and are sometimes highly commended in the world, they cannot be his primary priority in life nor do they make him the salt of the earth and the light of the world.

The essence of the Christian is found in Matthew 5:3-11: considering his failure to obey God makes him poor in spirit; he mourns for his sin; because he is aware of where he stands before God, he is meek; he hungers and thirsts for a right relationship with God, and because he trusts with his whole being that God has gracefully and mercifully dealt with his sin as God himself has promised, the Christian is himself merciful to others; he lives a God-centred life and works to bring others to a peaceful, right relationship with God. These are the true good works that will bring others to glorify God on the last day, though they may persecute the Christian in the meantime! (Matthew 5:10-11)

As the light of the world, God's use for the Christian is as a good influence, someone who has a positive impact on others (whether they think so or not). The Christian can be a light only if he is salty. While aid organisations and moral crusades may help plaster over the consequences of the global problem of sin, they do not even bother to warn others that they are mired in sin, much less tell anyone how to get out of the mess they're in. In fact, they mostly ignore God and his purposes altogether, advocating instead the self-sufficiency of man in dealing with his own problems and those of his neighbours. But as the rest of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17ff) shows, Jesus is the only one who can deal with the root problem of sin and stave off its dire consequences. If a Christian is in his essence authentically Christian, he will and must point others to the only way they can be saved from the wrath of God in his coming judgement for that is God's purpose for him in the world. And already, there is the implication of final judgement in the Sermon on the Mount: there will be a time of reckoning - useless salt that has lost its saltiness will be thrown out; Christians who do nothing to cause others to give glory to the Father by telling them about his son will be summarily ejected from his kingdom.

The house is burning to the ground. If our primary concern is the adverse effect of the rise in house temperatures on the electricity bill (the air-conditioning will have to work harder) or the threatened extinction of the rare species of aspidistra on the window sill or winning lengthy discussions on the complementary of decorative wall-painting techniques and lose our lives in the imminent destruction of the abode, do we really believe that destruction is at hand and that we, together with all the occupants of the house, are in imminent danger of a terrible fiery end? If we truly understand our position and truly trust in the only (and rather narrow) escape route, the treatment of smoke inhalation might be of some importance but we would find the even more pressing issue to be the evacuation of housemates to a place of safety and be saved ourselves as well.

A Trundle Through Sermon on the Mount
Earth Moves Under Feet, Kingdom Comes (Matthew 5-7)
This is the Sound of Inevitability (Matthew 5:1-6)
Breeding - We Hazs It (Matthew 5:7-12)
Coffee, Salt and Light, and the Essence and Use of the Christian (Matthew 5:13-16)
And the Missing Link is Jesus (Matthew 5:17-20)
Perfect Laws for Perfect Relationships (Matthew 5:21-48)
Cakes for Kierkegaard and Sermon on the Mount as Existentialist Answer Perhaps (Matthew 6:1-18)

Papa Palheta
140 Bukit Timah Road, off Hooper Road
Tel: +65-9799 0420 (Leon Foo)

Christmas and Couplehood

Christmas in Singapore.


Outside: the constant patter of grey rain. Inside: the citrus and spice fragrance of clove-studded orange pomanders. Roast turkeys being carved. A large bit of ham. Carols sung slightly off key. Jolliness and glow. Old friends. Exchanging gifts. The sweet whisky-soaked dried fruit filling of hot mince pies.


Fruitcakes from fav 2am Dessert Bar, homemade Christmas puddings soaked for months in brandy, Ghiradelli chocolates squares and Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate just off a plane from San Francisco.


Fudgey-centred chocolate cakes off Pierre Herme/Dorie Greenspan's Suzy's Cake recipe cuddling up to vanilla bean ice-cream and kirsch-soaked Griottines. Not much of a dessert fan, but surely there's a minute to spare for a play-around of temperatures, textures, tastes and mouthfeel. Plus this sort of thing seems to make people happy.


For some kids. Cracky Cherry Mini-Cakes were meant to be a variation on Dorie Greenspan's Dimply Plum Cake - swapping the plums for cherries and the orange for lemon zest. But their creator thought: meh, so boring. I'll substitute cake flour for baking powder and flour. And oh, for extra flavour layering, why not throw in a teaspoon of fleur de sel as well? The kids are probably tummy-aching to mommy now. Whingers.


Zesting off a bit of finger at the start of lemon meringue tart prep off another Pierre Herme/Dorie Greenspan recipe* which led later to too many bad joke variations on "oh, you almost gave us the finger?!".


One of the lemon meringue tart siblings cooling it on a retro dish. Vanilla bean pâte sablée was nice and polite but not quite sandy and salty enough to bring out the creamy tartness of the lemon cream.


Mini chocolate cupcakes dressed up for a party as strawberry sundaes.

Alright. Enough with all this gluttonous playing-around-with-food sentimentality. The aroma of the place of Jesus' birth bottled up would have been eau de la animal manure et la stinky afterbirth (pardon moi french). And is there really any way to pinpoint the accurate date of Jesus' birth in history?

But there is probably some truth in R C Sproul's warning, in Marley's Message To Scrooge, not to rain in on Jesus' parade with sniffy accusations of the commercialisation of Christmas, nor worry excessively about Santa the Pagan, but to celebrate it wholeheartedly. And why not grab the shiny opportunity, smiling and beckoning like a roasted chestnut, to tell people about the Christ of all?

The helpful folk at St Helen's Bishopsgate and UCCF have put together some videos:

That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.
St Helen's Bishopsgate's That's Christmas


UCCF's The Christmas Tale - a focus on the King of Glory's intriguingly poor start in life but not much else.

Am enjoying Andy's advent calendar. A far better treat than those cheap chocolates behind bits of dreary cardboard.


According to colleagues, the suicide rate for single Japanese men is highest during the festive season, done in by the stark realisation of their lonely existence. In this season of coupley-lurve, it was heartening to share meals with those who love God more than the perceived loserness of singlehood and find themselves free to consider discontinuing relationships with partners who have no such priorities.


But in the same week, hearts sank to know of professing Christians proposing to spend the rest of their lives in initimate relationship with enemies of God (Romans 5:10). There was a bit of a discussion with one party insistent that this sort of decision was merely unwise rather than a sin. But if sin is rebellion against God and refusing to acknowledge him as Lord and king, then is not such an action but an outward manifestation of the dangerously poor state of his soul vis a vis God? Does it not say that God is just a little tchotchke in my pocket that I take out to look at from time to time when I am not otherwise occupied in bed with people who hate him? (Judgement of any individual is God's alone of course but surely there is a need, an obligation even, to warn each other of the superficiality of worship that is sometimes more dangerous than expressed apostasy.)

So even if we think ourselves far above the commercialised circus that is the"yuletide festive season". Perhaps Christmas still isn't Christmas just because we arrange a carol service with no mention of reindeer or Santa, or give out cute evangelistic tracts (about shepherds washing their socks by night, and hark! the angel Harold singing) with our Christmas presents. Perhaps we only truly celebrate Christmas if Jesus is more than the vintage heritage of our childhood, or our latest hobbyhorse, or a handy psychological crutch; if we bow the knee (and the heart) to him as our saviour, lord, master, king, shepherd, God, all.

*yes, someone did just get Baking: From My Home to Yours 40% off at Borders

Black Forest Gateaux Cupcake Experiments and the Dosh on David in 2 Samuel 11

So there are colleagues who spend hours doing a screen-by-screen critique of Edison Chen's home movies and then there are colleagues who, despite declaring themselves old skool, cannot resist folding in references to Nigella Lawson and her ample posterior into every (baking) conversation:

"Hey, what chocolate do you think is best for this cake?"
"Well, Nigella would say 'best dark chocolate' but look at her now."

"Do you think I should up the proportion of butter?"
"Well, Nigella always heaves in a heckload of butter, but then that's how her ass got to the size of a Budweiser horse's."

"You know, everyone complains that Nigella's shows are porn, that she uses sex to sell food..." (Apparently the good lady spends alot of airtime licking things while staring meaningfully into the camera lens.) "...but I find her a disgusting glutton. At the end of every show, they have this bit where she sneaks into the kitchen in her nightie to steal food. There is nothing even remotely sexy about her inability to control herself. This is why the obese glutton flopped in France like the rancid lard-butt that she is whereas Trish Deseine is so popular."

Nigella made another appearance in our latest conversation on the infamous black forest gateaux project:
"If all else fails, you can adapt a recipe from How To Be A Domestic Goddess. Nigella recipes are so easy that even, if you pardon the expression, a half-brained monkey could whip them up."

But it became apparent late in the day that the recipe itself wasn't the problem.

The problem was the possession of an unusual palate, one fond of intense flavours and a variety of textures in one confection; one roused only by perceived complexity and depth. Few others commensurated. This meant it was fairly useless for taste-testing food to be eaten by other people. Therefore, man-on-the-SBS-bus guinea pigs cupcake testers had to be recruited for the purpose.

Black Forest Cupcake Prototype Beta: the consensus was that the cupcake was very rich (score!). This didn't stop people from scarfing most of it after a very full dinner while complaining about aforementioned richness.

Everyone also agreed that the sponge had the right texture and a good crumb, was nice and chocolatey and moist. I'd left them a bit fudgey which was a-ok with the testers. Apparently some cupcakes bought off homebakers through the internet had crumbled like dust and tasted like styrofoam, so they hadn't been expecting much better.

The proportion of alcohol was just right (I upped this for the alkie whose cupcake was deliberately doused with kirsch and as a consequence was happy for the rest of the afternoon). Opinion on the cream cheese frosting was varied: some liked how it cut through the uniform taste of the cake, some thought it introduced too many flavours, others thought it was too salty for what they perceived to be a sweet dessert, and still others just bore a grudge against cheese in all forms anyways. The kirsch-soaked half-globe cherry layer had some rabid fans but others thought them distracting. "How to pack the cherries to perfection so as to use as little cream as possible?" ask Tomaso Aste and Denis Weaire in The Pursuit of Perfect Packing. I just didn't use any cream lor. Which probably contributed to the lack of structural integrity.

Black Forest Cupcake Prototype Gamma, topped with thick cream and cream cheese whipped together and sprinkled with dark chocolate curls, was better received.

Take us to your leader!

The second problem was that, despite what all this baking and (cup)caking might suggest, I wasn't actually fond of sweets and desserts. Like how it had been with the chemistry kit, I just liked observing chemical reactions taking place. So naturally, was most keen on having the cool sort of housemates who'd be ecstatic about a bathtub splattered with chocolate.

These chaps were working on a recipe from Heston (Fat Duck) Blumenthal's In Search of Perfection. Which hot-blooded person wouldn't be excited about the power-tools macho-ness of assembling a black forest gateau with the aid of a vacuum cleaner, a paint spray gun and several canisters of nitrous oxide? The Times published a copy of the recipe here and The Independent, unsurprisingly, dissed it/its creator as pretentious.

Edison Chen, Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal. Everyone loves to have a go at public figures. There is good money to be made by tabloids in putting people on pedestals and tearing them down later. The gossip rags in Zion/Jerusalem must have had a field day with King David.

The story is well-known. In spring, the time kings go out to battle, the glorious leader is slacking in the palace. After an idle lounge-about one afternoon, he steps out to the balcony to survey his kingdom and spies a very beautiful woman (in the words of 2 Samuel 11) bathing. He inquires as to her identity and is told that she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his own valiant men (1 Chronicles 11:41) who is away fighting David's wars for him. Whatever. David has the unfortunately-named Bathsheba is brought to him, he has his way with her and then sends her home. She later discovers that she is pregnant with his child.

David's first instinct is to cover up the deed by recalling Uriah from battle and trying to get him to sleep with his wife. Uriah refuses to even step into his own house. Damningly he reasons,"The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing." (2 Samuel 11:11). His concern is for his compatriots, his king, his nation and God, not his personal desires and comfort.

But David is unrepentant. He then attempts to get Uriah drunk so Uriah might do everyone a favour and wander off home in his inebriated state. But even when plastered, Uriah remains resolute. So like a good mafia boss, David arranges to have him killed in battle. David then marries Uriah's grieving widow, Bathsheba.

This would have been a nice clean ending to the mess since pesky forensic detectives and democratic tabloids had yet to be invented. But someone was watching. He knew what David had done last spring (2 Samuel 11:27) and wasn't terribly pleased. And he had the power to do something about it.

But in the meanwhile, we tsk and tut at David's folly and expound on the dangers of giving in to lust and of open-air baths. But secretly, we are pleased. It is good to see a righteous man fall. It is good to hear of married pastors running off with their partners or of priests molesting young boys. It is good to know that people are scum like us so we won't have to try so hard to be godly; we can be content wallowing in our scuminess. In fact, we can go one better by riding past on our moral highhorse and spitting on these once great/respected men. (The hip-ness of environmentalism and animal welfare-ism can also be linked to this, but that's another post.)

The most satisfying thing about all the juicy "did you hear?", "did you know?" tattle is to gasp, hand to open mouth,"Who would have guessed?" Who would have guessed that David, God's own anointed king, the person God said was a man after his own heart, would have so nonchalantly committed adultery and murder?

But perhaps the right and smart response to all this is not to be smugly confirmed in our sinfulness but to be warned never to be fooled into being complacent about our lack of sin. Life isn't a moral high-horse race or a competition to convince ourselves that we are really good people. It is lived out under an all-seeing, all-knowing judge who will one day deal justly with all who do not live rightly according to the natural laws of his creation.

But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD. (2 Samuel 11:27)

____________________________________

• The Myanmar-Sichuan Double Disasters, Ironman and Watchmen, and 2 Samuel 21 - 24
• Dead Dogs, Dead Cows and Dead Men in 2 Samuel 19 - 20
  
• Chek Jawa, the 37.96km Ride Along the Eastern Coastal Park Connector etc and 2 Samuel 14 - 18
  
• Inevitabilities, Boat Asia, Strawberries, 五月天 (wuyuetian, MayDay)'s 回到地球表面 (Down To Earth) Concert and 2 Samuel 12
• Black Forest Gateaux Cupcake Experiments and the Dosh on David in 2 Samuel 11
• The Covalent Bonds of Cake-baking and the Covenantal Bonds of 2 Samuel 8-10
  
• Operation Leftover Easter Stuff: Chocolate Experiments in the Physiology of Taste and 2 Samuel 7
  
• The Return of Sunshine and the Return of the Ark in 2 Samuel 6
• Operation Leftover Easter Stuff: Reconstructed Deconstructed Lemon Meringue Tart and 2 Samuel 1 - 4
  

The Covalent Bonds of Cake-baking and the Covenantal Bonds of 2 Samuel 8-10

Made some petit fours for someone's birthday last week. She's a great fan of the colour pink so dyed the white chocolate topping pink and sprinkled pink sea flakes on the rest of the mini-cakes.

They were accompanied by a small syringe of cream cheese - for those who might want a little extra on the side.

The bottom row: the result of cake mixture baked in an oven that was moseying up to the desired temperature because someone couldn't be bothered to preheat it. The middle row: the result of cake mixture baked in a preheated (by default) oven. The empty space in the top row: the result of not putting up "Eat and Die!" signs when the cakes are cooling.


This week, someone else asked for a blackforest cake (black forest gauteux to Brits) for her birthday, at which point, Eddie Izzard's "Cake or Death" routine came to mind. In the context of my baking, the only response would be,"Oooh, I'll have the cake and the death please, if you don't mind."

There is no love lost between the BFG and I: sponge? Bland. Whipped cream? Boring calories. Maraschino cherries? Like eating plastic. Still, googled some recipes, all at some sort of variance with each other. At which point, baking recipes seemed a repository of old wives tales asking to be taken with a heavy dose of stupidly blind faith. Might as well believe that ugly people sour the cream, bathing naked under the full moonlight in the Singapore River will give you SKII-clear skin and praying over the new TV will keep the follically-endowed Sadako from emerging therefrom. Oh, wait. Some people do believe such things.

In line with the constant need to know the whys, hows and whatfors of things that used to traumatise teachers and make priests almost lose their faith, decided it was best to first investigate science behind a basic cake.

Alot of science is made up of theories about material phenomena and explanations of interactions and correlations between multiple phenomena. And theories are really mere hypotheses, to be confirmed for the meanwhile or to be disproved at the next experiment.


Still, without adequate resources, equipment and guinea pigs to test all theories out for myself, we takes what we can gets for now. It's amazing how much complexity there is behind the 4 basic ingredients for a cake: eggs, sugar, flour and fat. It's also amazing the sort of books we have in the national/community libraries of Singapore.

Most recipes for sponge cake insist on either baking soda, baking powder or self-raising flour. From using sodium bicarbonate and diluted hydrochloric acid and red dye to simulate a stomach bursting under Japanese water torture in history class, and from whatever little knowledge gleaned from chemistry class, remember baking soda as an alkali. Therefore its use in sponge cakes is probably to, through its reaction with other ingredients, produce carbon dioxide that would make the cake rise into required sponginess.


Pierre Hermé however, in Chocolate Desserts, does not require the addition of an alkali. Instead, he advocates the whipping of the egg whites and egg yolks separately, then folding the whipped whites and other ingredients into the yolks.

Some sort of sponge cake method? Peter Barham (of the famous Physics of the Black Forest Gauteux lectures at Bristol) gives this probably rather simplistic for-the-layman explanation in The Science of Cooking:

Genoese (Génoise) Sponge Cake
The best sponge cakes are those with most and smallest bubbles when cooked. Genoese sponge cakes do not use a raising agent as baking powder, but rather the bubbles are made before the cake is put in the oven. The bubbles are in the form of an egg foam. The other ingredients are then gently added to the foam so as not to break any of the carefully prepared bubbles and then the cake is cooked. The cake rises a little during the cooking as the air inside the bubbles expands and as some steam is generated. In the oven, the heat crosslinks and coagulates the egg proteins and so sets the cake.

Eggs

Egg whites are made of proteins. Proteins themselves are made up of amino acids held together by internal hydrogen bonds. Hydrogen bonds are...well, to paraphrase John Polyani "chemist-speak for 'it makes atoms stick together but we don't know why'."

The aim of whipping the egg white is to break down the hydrogen bonds from their natural state ("denaturation") to incorporate the air bubbles. Denaturation occurs by heat (egg proteins denature at 40 degrees celcius) and by stretching the molecules through agitation.

Harold McGee in On Food And Cooking adds that ovalbumin, the major protein in egg white, is relatively immune to beating and doesn't contribute much to the raw foam. However, it is sensitive to hear, which causes it to unfold and coagulate. So when the raw foam is cooked, ovalbumin more than doubles the amount of solid protein reinforcement in the bubble walls. At the same time, much of the free water in the foam evaporates.

There is some fat present in the egg yolk, which decreases the ability of the proteins to foam well, analogous to the disappearance of washing up bubbles when oily dishes are added. Which is why Monsieur Pierre recommends the segregation of the white and yolk for whipping.

Also, not all eggs are created equal. McGee gives some pointers: old eggs at room temperature are often recommended on the grounds that the whites are thinner and therefore foam more rapidly. This is true, and very fresh eggs are said to be almost impossible to foam by hand. But fresh eggs are less alkaline and so make a more stable foam; the older thin white also drains from the foam more easily, and old eggs are more likely to leave traces of yolk in the white. Cold yolks are less likely to break as you separate them from the whites, and the whipping process quickly warms cold eggs anyway.

Both Barham and McGee concur about the apparent magical qualities of beating eggs in copper bowls: copper has the useful tendency to form extremely tight bonds with reactive sulfur groups: so tight that the sulfur is essentially prevented from reacting with anything else (sounds like TomKat to me). So the presence of copper in foaming egg whites essentially eliminates the strongest kind of protein bond that can form, and makes it harder for the proteins to embrace each other too tightly.

Sugar

If the egg foam is the tenous framework, then the sugar acts as the reinforcement bars. Sugar increases the viscosity or "thickness" of the egg.

McGee: by making the liquid thick and cohesive, sugar greatly slows drainage from the bubble walls and coarsening of texture. In the oven, the dissolved sugar hangs onto the water molecules and so delays their evaporation in the high heat after ovalbumin has had time to coagulate and reinforce the raw foam. And it eventually contributes reinforcement of its own in the form of fine by solid, cotton-candy-like strands of dry sugar.

McGee also warns that the addition of sugar early in the foaming process actually reduces the foam's ultimate volume and lightness. The delay comes from sugar's interference with the unfolding and bonding of the proteins. And the reduction in volume and lightness is caused by the syrupy sugar-egg mixture being harder to spread into thin bubble walls. Useful for equipment-challenged people like me who have to hand-whip the stuff.

Flour

The flour acts like concrete. The starch is a reinforcing agent which stiffens and strengthens the egg foam. Without starch, the egg foams even when cooked would not be strong enough to support the cake filling. There is also some cross-linking of proteins to starch during cooking.

Fat (butter or oil)

This acts as an anti-staling agent which slows down the rate at which water consorts with the starch and turns the cake stale. It also adds flavour and texture to the cake. It is quite possible to make perfectly acceptable cakes without adding any fats but they would become stale in just an hour or two.

McGee opines that solid fats also retain air bubbles thanks to their semisolid consistency. When beaten together with sugar, the air carried along by the sugar crystals and beater becomes immobilised in the mixture of crystalline and liquid fat. And while butter is still the fat of choice for bakers who value flavour over lightness of texture, modern vegetable shortenings do a better job of incorporating air bubbles into cake batter.


Armed with these hypotheses, I came up with this plan for making the sponge layer of the BFG without chocolate:

1. preheat oven (since it is a race against time to immobilise the air bubbles in the egg foam which would have started collapsing with the addition of the fat and egg yolk mixture. Also if the batter sets slowly, the expanding air bubbles can coalesce to produce a coarse, heavy texture)
2. melt butter (ensures time taken to mix in butter is minimised, thus reducing amount of collapse of egg foam)
3. repair very old weighing machine, then measure out flour and sugar (no sifting because unlike what most books say apparently, sifting does nothing to aerate the mixture later. The sifting was a historical requirement to preclude weevil or mouse-dropping flavoured cakes)
   
4. whisk egg yolk and sugar together until pale yellow (colour being a guide to the size of the bubbles in the mixture. Theoretically, smaller particles will reflect back more light in all directions, making the object appear to be a colour nearer the white-side of the spectrum)
   
5. whisk egg white, adding sugar only after soft peaks form
   
6. fold in everything in quickly "with a light hand" (again to minimise collapse of egg foam)
   
7. pop in oven
8. remember to check oven
   

Despite assurances from Barham and McGee, I still marvelled at the rising of the cakes (in cupcake containers for experimental purposes) without the benefit of raising agents. This one was probably subject to too hot an oven.

This first experiment was meant to test the difference between the use of plain flour and cake flour. Cake flour has less protein than plain flour and I wanted to see if this would result in less moisture retention and a more poofy cake. Unfortunately, I got too bored waiting for the cake-floured cake to bake, wandered off and left it in the oven for too long, thereby inadvertently introducing another variable into the experiment. I might also have used a different higher temperature for the second cake. Nevermind, I thought, I'll just do a taste test when I get home from work to see what can be gleaned. But when I got home, the cakes had been eaten by person or person(s) unknown. Their crushed containers lay empty in the bin. I bet Pierre and Marie Curie never had this sort of problem.

Anyway, someone owned up later by saying that although the cakes were very yummy, one of them was a bit on the dense side. Not quite the very sponginess the birthday girl had requested. The unwitting guinea pig not having paid much attention to which one he had eaten, I could only guess that the reference was to the cake flour model. Was this the consequence of its length of time in the oven, the low-protein of the flour or the ratio of flour to sugar and fat?

The second experimental batch spent less time in the oven. I replaced some of the flour with cocoa powder (Valrhona, therefore dutch-processed, cocoa powder apparently having the ability to take on some of the water-absorbing and structural duties of flour, being about 50% carbohydrate and 20% non-gluten protein) and added melted chocolate to the melted butter, thereby introducing far too many variables for this to be a proper experiment.

Black Forest Cupcake Prototype Alpha

These ugly chaps were tasty and small of crumb but still too dense for a spongey sponge. Did I fold in with too heavy a hand? Did the cocoa powder and chocolate take in too much water?

The experiments continue...

...as does our womble through the second book of Samuel. 2 Samuel 8-10 reminded me how, just as we put our faith in scientific theories because the stated results have been proved over and over again through numerous experiments, so we put our faith in God not with the blindfolds on but because he has proved over and over again that he can be trusted.

In 2 Samuel 7:9, God had promised to make for David "a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth". Fast forward to 2 Samuel 8:1-14 and David did indeed defeat the Philistines, the Moabites, Hadadezer king of Zobah, the Syrians and the Edomites and he defeats the Ammonites in 2 Samuel 10. Through his conquests and victories, David made a name for himself (2 Samuel 8:13) or rather, it was God who made a great name for David, for it was God who gave David the victories (2 Samuel 8:6,14).

And not only were David's victories a fulfilment of God's promises to him, they were also a fulfilment of God's promises to Abraham about a thousand years before. In Genesis 15, God had covenanted with Abraham concerning roughly the same geographical area:

To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites. (Genesis 15:18-21)

This was also the land God had promised Israel, the place where he would "plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and be disturbed no more. And violent men shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel" (2 Samuel 7:10).

God's promises were being fulfilled (in part) through his chosen king David and David too modelled some of God's covenantal faithfulness. In his younger days, desperate and fearful for his life, David had made a covenant with Jonathan not to cut off his steadfast love from Jonathan's house forever, even when the LORD cut off every one of David's enemies from the face of the earth (1 Samuel 20:14-15). With Jonathan dead and no witnesses to the covenant, David could easily have ignored it, or dismissed it as youthful folly. Instead, not only did he not kill Jonathan's remaining son, Mephibosheth, the obvious rival to the throne, he also heaped generous kindness on him: bestowing upon him the privilege of eating at the king's table (2 Samuel 9:7,9,13) and also restoring to him all the lands of his grandfather Saul and servants to work the land so that he and his family would be well-provided for (2 Samuel 9:7-13).

But, as suggested by the reference to a future king who would be both David's offspring and God's own son (2 Samuel 7:12-16) David was merely a foreshadowing of God's perfect anointed king to come. His name was Jesus, through whom (as Yuk Yee pointed out) God showed generous kindness to us: while we were still enemies, Christ died for us. Very rarely would anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. Yet Christ died for the benefit of undeserving sinners (Romans 5:6-8).

And through Jesus' death, he gained victory over more than physical territory. He destroyed the devil who had the power of death over us and so delivered us from the slavery of death (Hebrews 2:14-15). And having gained victory over more than just terra, Jesus' rule was and is over and above everything: all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come (Ephesians 1:21).

If Jesus rules over all things, then there is no opting in or out of his rule. The choice lies in acknowledging this reality or living as Jesus' enemies, to our future and eternal detriment.

__________________________________

• The Myanmar-Sichuan Double Disasters, Ironman and Watchmen, and 2 Samuel 21 - 24
• Dead Dogs, Dead Cows and Dead Men in 2 Samuel 19 - 20
  
• Chek Jawa, the 37.96km Ride Along the Eastern Coastal Park Connector etc and 2 Samuel 14 - 18
  
• Inevitabilities, Boat Asia, Strawberries, 五月天 (wuyuetian, MayDay)'s 回到地球表面 (Down To Earth) Concert and 2 Samuel 12
• Black Forest Gateaux Cupcake Experiments and the Dosh on David in 2 Samuel 11
  
• Operation Leftover Easter Stuff: Chocolate Experiments in the Physiology of Taste and 2 Samuel 7
  
• The Return of Sunshine and the Return of the Ark in 2 Samuel 6
• Operation Leftover Easter Stuff: Reconstructed Deconstructed Lemon Meringue Tart and 2 Samuel 1 - 4
  
  

Easter Cupcakes at the Easter Cupcakery and Dale Ralph Davis on 2 Kings

The almost perpetual rain over the last few weeks ruled out all macho outdoor sports (cos those huge raindrops frighten us, yeah), leaving us with nancy indoor ones like badminton. And table tennis. And figure skating.

Ugg Cookies
Ugly like the boots but less woolly and more edible

Why not go the whole nancy hog and bake something then. Darkies over blondies any day. Preferably the sort that will stick to the roof of your mouth, then to your gullet and then give you such a sore throat that only the most potent liang cha made from the horn of a pure gold unicorn can cure. It was pointed out however that although this was pretty nancy compared to a mutual friend's Indian curry which has been known to vapourise the digestive tracts of the unsuspecting, it still didn't quite register on the poof-o-meter. And this even though we left some (ugg) blonde highlights in.

Fondant flowers in naff pink and naff purple. Fondant leaves in naff green.

Righto. Would cupcakes do the trick then? Oh, and what if they were topped the sort of useless foul-tasting fondant cuties that people coo at for 2 seconds then scrape off into the dustbin?[1] Unfortunately, despite the attempt at outward adornment to accessorise the innocent cupcake disguise, these still went far wide of the poof-o-meter on account of their actually being if-thrown-will-leave-hole-in-ceiling things densely molten with 85% African Valrhona chocolate at the core and slathered with thick stick-to-your-teeth 70% Venezuelian Valrhona cream cheese[2]. Like Keith Richards in drag.

I am pink. Therefore I am not a cabbage.

(This being my first time with fondant, impeccable logic dictated that I head straight for the rosa centifolia. Meanwhile, a great debate ensued about proportionality in simulacra and the manifestation of Fibonacci sequences in roses and I forgot to hold on to the fondant, then it just got too boring sticking on more petals, hence this halfun-baked attempt.)

Woohoo! Alien eggs! Dark chocolate Maltesers.

When the beta-testers KO'ed after only a bite[3], I knew I'd gotten the recipe right. Unfortunately, since weighing machines weren't a feature in the kitchen and I didn't know how much of what ingredient had gone into the deadly dessert, there was no way of replicating that. (There were loads of "baking essentials" that didn't feature in the kitchen. The kitchenaid, for instance, had opposable thumbs and was powered by elbow grease.)

Da bunny dunna belong to Easter. So Audrey II ates him.

Tooling around the kitchen was actually an awful lot of fun. Especially with Dale Ralph Davis on 2 Kings, which led to a lot of snorting of icing sugar and laughing into the batter.

Staging area for happycake fondant decorations awaiting deployment.

Baking is reminiscent of fooling around with the chemistry set I got for my 12th Christmas but without Rylands v Fletcher consequences. Those experiments were wet squibs compared to the smoke bomb a friend made with a recipe he'd gotten off the web. The resultant product did successfully give off a lot of smoke and, as a bit of a bonus, also left a crater in his backyard. Naturally, he figured he must have gotten the ingredients wrong and tried to make another in his kitchen ex-kitchen.

So comparatively, messing about with these edibles was pretty harmless stuff, a marzipan carrot up the snot, some chocolate warming in the armpit, nothing terrible, except for the time, unbeknownst to me, someone gave away some experiments to the neighbours. I think an ambulance pulled up for the old dear next door shortly after.

Cadbury's Twirl for nesting material, Cadbury's Mini Eggs. Poof-o-meter = +1

Obviously, with such clear confirmation of my incontestable baking talent, the only loving thing to do for Easter was to whip up a batch of cupcakes for my Bible study group. What better opportunity, after all, for them to demonstrate their assurance of salvation?

And yeah so what if these products were chock-full of such healthy nutrients as refined sugar, refined flour, nuts specially for those allergic to nuts, scary E numbers, unidentified preservatives and the recommended daily calorie intake for a woolly mammoth? Focus on those resurrection bodies, people!

Very thankful for the few hours of sabbathing while kneading and stirring, listening to Dale Ralph Davis[4] gossiping about God in 2 Kings 3 - 7 ("The Days of Elisha"). It is always wonderful to have a womble through the Old Testament if for nothing else (but there's so much more to it), then just to ogle again at the internal consistency of different parts of the Bible written over hundreds of years by many different authors all telling parts of the same story.

There is also something about seeing how God worked in Old Testamental times that adds to our knowledge of the richness of his character and person and so the growth of our love for him. A read through a few books of the Bible tosses out the generalisation that the strict Old Testament God changed into a loving God in the New Testament. God's character remains consistent throughout the records of his dealings with mankind, so we don't have to second-guess his will at any given time.

From 2 Kings 3, we see a God who is sovereign over affairs so that he might choose not to help the ungrateful who do not acknowledge him (Elisha points out that Jehoram who has come to seek God to help him out of his impending devastation isn't making much sense. He still worships other gods, why come to God for help? And why should Elisha entertain him?) or still choose to help them inspite of their ingratitude. We also see a God who is generous and sometimes doesn't just give what is asked of him but lavishly more (Jehoram and his pals just needed water supplies. God gave them more water than they needed and not only that, but also gave their enemies the Moabites into their hands.). And wonderfully, God is a God who is willing to listen to his creatures. We do not realise what a privilege this is until we contrast this with how the king of Moab resorted to burning his own son as an offering to call in his god's favour for the battle (2 Kings 3:27).

God's generosity is also demonstrated in his willingness to give abundantly in 2 Kings 4:1-7 - the poor widow whose son was about to be sold off by creditors not only got enough oil to pay off her debts but even more than that so that she and her son could live off the proceeds. God works through the person's faith to bring about the petitioned result.

(Sometimes, when God works wonders in your life, it may be that he wants you to keep it to yourself; it may be that he doesn't want you to put it in your testimony at the next convention (Elisha, God's representative, told the widow to go into her house and close the door behind her).)

There are times that God gives, just because (2 Kings 4:8-37). God gave the wealthy old childless woman a son even though she didn't ask for one. Whereas with Sarah and Rachel a child had been necessary to continue the Abrahamic line so that God's promises could be fulfilled, this nameless son was, in that way, unnecessary.

We see also how God cares that people live in right relationship and full dependence on him. He made the self-sufficient needy so that they would relate correctly as creatures to their Creator and Sustainer. The wealthy old lady had told Elisha that she didn't need anything from God ("I dwell with my own people") but later, after the death of her only son, she held onto Elisha's feet and begged him to resurrect him, which he did.

(Despite Elisha being the agent of this miracle, we must remember the limitations of the LORD's servants. Elisha was God's representative, his wisdom and his power came from God. We must be careful not to make idols of God's servants because they can't bear the burden of God. And we too are God's servants - we may not always know what the Lord is doing in other people's lives so we should not presume to judge or advise if (as is likely) the LORD has hidden it from us (2 Kings 4:27).)

The caring nature of God does not mean that he miraculously spares his people from the circumstances they are in. The sons of the prophets in 2 Kings 4:38-41 weren't spared the famine in Gilgal. They were so in need of food that it was a real problem when the stew was rendered inedible because of some wild gourds someone had cut into it.

(God created the universe just by speaking, but he caters to our human weakness by giving us physical signs of his works: Elisha poured flour into the pot of stew to make it edible again. Similarly Jesus put his fingers into a deaf-and-mute man's ear and put his spit onto the man's tongue in the process of curing him (Mark 7:31-37). So we should not despise God-instituted signs like the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the wine in remembrance of Jesus' death and resurrection.)

Our God is a God who is not only concerned about his great plan for humanity but also for simple needs. For the son of a prophet who lost his axehead in the water, the loss was not trivial in his sight (2 Kings 6). He was poor enough not to be able to own his own axehead and had borrowed it from someone. And God was pleased to help the man in his time of genuine need even though his concern was simple.

Lest anyone think that God is just God of a little Israelite ghetto, 2 Kings 5 reminds us that God is the God of the whole world. God decides who wins and who loses in wars and in that instance, he gave victory to Syria through Naaman. God's rule is sweeping. There are no bounds to his sovereignty. And God is sovereign not just in world affairs but also in the small circumstances. He put a little Israelite servant girl in Naaman's household and she told Naaman's wife about Elisha.

Yet even though God is sovereign all things, we think that we know well enough so that we can presume to find God's ways offensive. Naaman was offended at being directed to wash in the dodgy rivers of Israel rather than the therapeutic waters of Damascus. But God, through Elisha, said that the way was narrow and there was only one way he could be healed from leprosy. In the same way, the gospel is offensive too to some people. It messes with their broadmindedness. Why only this way? Why only one way? The greatest objection to God's ways seems not to be the difficulty of their execution but that they humble our terribly misinformed pride. Yet humility, because of our inadequacy and our creatureliness, has been the right way to relate to our Creator since the first human was created.

The interesting thing is that if we'd invented God, we would have made him far more congenial. The fact that we are offended and irritated and angered by this God suggests that he might, in fact, be real.

_____________________________________________

[1] Turns out that people didn't scrape off the stuff after all. In fact, they liked the fondant and thought it tasted like tang yuan (glutinous rice balls).

[2] I therefore dub these "happycakes" (not to be confused with spacecakes) because of the alleged psychoactive tryptophan-carrying endorphin-inducing qualities of the chocolate and the hours of rampant giggling wrought by the silly fondant decorations (though not doubt also caused by the ingested chocolate).

[3] Perhaps this had more to do with the choice of beta-testers. A staffworker came over to our lunch table saying that he'd heard that chocolate cupcakes were emanating from hereabouts. When handed one for a small taster, he shovelled the lot up in about a minute and was perfectly fine after. (He did say however, that even though he was sure of his salvation, he still had young children that needed his care and that his wife mightn't be too pleased if I'd sent him on his heaven-bound way earlier than she expected.)

[4] Davis is a good combination of scholar, preacher and pastor (he current pastors and teaches at Woodland Presbyterian Church). He deals with the critical theories and interpretative problems of the text and traces the Messianic thread through the Old Testament, yet this is never merely academic but breathing doctrine to be lived out in our lives as our God lives and we live. Reckon his commentary on 2 Kings, The Power and The Fury, might be a good read.

More Music To Scaff Cupcakes By

The thing to do when completely rained in is to conspire with friends to drink tea and scoff cupcakes.

Click through for credits

Some cheerful lolli-pop for a little Poptart in the cupcakery:
Bishop Allen Rain
Danielson Did I Step On Your Trumpet?
Page France Say Wolf in the Summertime
Hello Seahorse! Can Let You Go
Half Handed Cloud A Suit of Clouds to Ride the Skies
Oh No! Oh My! Walk In The Park
Jane Herships The Ballad of Clementine Jones
Bishop Allen Butterfly Nets
Gruff Rhys Candylion

And if it is still pouring outside:
Cocorosie Noah's Ark
Chin Up Chin Up I Need A Friend With A Boat
and Sesame Street jingles from post-9/11 indie kids who insist that they aren't making Christian music; they just happen, they say, to be Christian:

• John Ringhofer as Half-Handed Cloud on the same Asthmatic Kitty label as Sufjan Stevens; and
  
• Daniel Smith as (Brother) Danielson on Asthmatic Kitty's sister label Sounds Familyre.

Never have songs about blood, sin, death, being hoodwinked into accepting false solutions to God's punishment and eating one's children been accompanied by such playful quirky instrumentation.

A Long Week, "Everything But The Brain" and Christian Friendship

This post makes sense to, maybe, 5 8 an unknown number of people? Thanks guys for your friendship in Christ. Am glad to have gotten by With A Little Help From My Friends (even though the assistance may well have been unintentional).

It was a long (time being relative, see) week at work, where dinner meant Superdog and early dinner that meant at 10pm we mosey-ed up to the nearest food-source, a gilded Chinese restaurant of the sort that only does good business at reunion dinners and business lo heis, and ordered takeaway in the kind of earnest Cantonese (despite not being Cantonese) that has never failed to so warm the cockles of the MSG-ladden heart of many a Chinese restaurant manager that he cannot help but put extra ("I give you extra. Enjoy, enjoy.") in the takeaway. Despite such generosity, was grateful for short timelets away from food in plastic boxes, tedious negotiations, flickering computer screens and dreary bits of paper.

(Must also add that thanks to sympathetic calls, sms-es and gchats, there was nadda a peep of Keane's "Somewhere Only We Know", misheard.
Props also to the I for furry comic relief contained in an Avenue Q CD:

*images from Avenue Q

Princeton - at a loss about what to do with a BA in English, Gary Coleman (yes, that Gary Coleman), an orientalAsian-American called Christmas Eve, Rod the self-denying closet homo-whatever, the B-side to mix-tape messages, Brian who made it known that he wasn't wearing underwear, Trekkie Monster the millionaire internet porn addict, and life outside one's apartment - a squished cat.)

At frisbee pick-up, there was a wide field of green grass under a wide sky and gusts of wind (surely, for the office dust), and laughing and shouting, and good sportsmanship, and lurking pools of mud to trap wayward soles. Time for new shoes, though not quite of the goody-two variety.

At Bible study on Luke 10:24-37, the Good Samaritan wasn't a goody-two-shoes to be emulated but a slap in the face for the expert-in-the-law who could not honestly hold to the conceit of having attained such perfection in loving God and neighbour.

At pool, amazing misses, brilliant longshots, accidental snooking and situational karaoke.

Macham "Community Spirit in Face of Terrorist Attack"

At Action Theatre and Jean Tay's "Everything But The Brain" where Gerald Chew was a young father with promise and a debilitated old man and swept the dust from our feet, and Pam Oei was a tantrum-throwing child and a menopausal princess and winked: Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, collapse-able/expand-able time explained by 3 bears with colourful pantaloons, travelling close to the speed of light to slow down time, a baby bear with slits for eyes at a grin and gravity-defying hair, a train to Malacca, an unmarried 36-year old physics teacher, a 66-year old scientist who suffered 2 strokes, Timothy Nga's unexpectedly young 27-year old doctor who doubled as an evil blood clot, a creaking swing, a ladder that was an upright hospital bed and also a ladder, a tupperware container fetish to contain leftovers and memories, a white sheet that could have been just a bedsheet, travelling the world with a brain in a tupperware, faint sounds of heart beats and tinkling and general ambient stuff (thanks Sonicbrat). There were absolutes around which all things relative fell into place. There was unconditional love pursued yet unpursued. There was conditional love that was a limp kiss and, as someone tried to explain, grotesque.

After: physicists trying to explain to lawyers and accountants how light is measured and relativity on quantum levels appearing as magnetism, black holes, dreaming of time travel and portals, a huge heap of hokkien noodles and oyster omelette and barbecued chicken wings at Glutton's Bay, a good recommendation of banana tempura (no mere goreng pisang, this) to be dipped in vanilla kaya, and laughing at Crazy Horse (Eng Wah promptly announced its closure that very night. But somehow, Channel Newsasia just isn't the sort of thing one admits to channelling).

And at no point did anyone hum Stephen Bishop's "All of My Life (It Might Be You)" from Tootsie.

(But speaking of lying on the sand watching seabirds fly...[cue: lengthy paranthesis]

One day, it was sunny!

Hearts fairly bursting with the freedom of dry ground and lack of precipitation, we grabbed swim stuff and towels and sunnies and hats and sunscreen and ran to the beach.

The joy of frisbees gloriously winging through the air, deliriously dizzy in bright blues and yellows. And in reds and whites, to lie on the soft sand when we were done, happy and hot, sun on faces, sun on necks, sun on limbs, raising heads now and then to drink from a pitcher of ice lemon tea. All around, the greenery imbibing their fill of the sunshine, chlorophyllicly ecstatically ecstatic.

It was a time for languid plans. Plans for a cupcakery in a bookshop. Plans for a cupcakery with white walls and a line of Kitchenaids of eggshell-blue and cotton-candy pink. Plans for a cupcakery with glass domes for a heap of thick dark chocolate buttercream ganache on dark chocolate cupcakes piled high, for a crowd of snickerdoodle ones rich with chunks of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Mars bars and slathered with peanut butter cream, for a huddle of lemon meringue ones like little browned puffs of clouds on solid summer. No red velvet with rainbow sprinkles please. Plans also for a bookshop with deep-chestnut shelves and cosy enclaves for long browses and rooms for Bible studies and talks. We will have a music compile: "Music To Scarf Cupcakes And Browse Books By", frosted with Under Byen, Jane Herships and her song for Clementine, and Kelly de Martino and Bumblebees, all fresh minimalist delicateness and floatiness for the sunshine outside. Perhaps we will also sprinkle on Mathieu Boogaerts for poppish sweetness. And if Sam Beam of Iron & Wine wanted to play less breathy stuff on Friday nights, I suppose we wouldn't protest too stridently.)

Ah, but too many people, not enough meal-slots. Still, thankful for the fraction met before they sped through the clouds back to whence they'd come. At a meal with holidaying theology students, at first, it was all,"Woah, to spend all your days just reading the Scripture, talking about God's Word and listening to the Bible being taught! Always having someone at hand to discuss things with! To pray with! Studying the things of eternity! Without having to hide in your room or to exercise self-censorship! Shiok or what?!" And the reply was that sin is a real and stubborn thing and actually, actually, it required a great effort to get any Bible-reading done.

Late into the night, over bottles of China Apple (not a Mac) to maintain cheena-ness, looking into the eternity of forever, good heart-to-hearts, tearing over unsaved relatives and friends, the terrible offensiveness of the gospel to non-believers, the encouragement of God's lessons through different sorts of adversity, nonchalance over singleness, excitement over ministry plans and backup plans and backup backup plans and God's sovereignty, accountability partnerships, teasing out the hard work of friendship and loving one's brothers and sisters in face of universal sinfulness, fallen-ness and Babel-hood.

Thank God for the very good goodness of soul-mates: the friendship and mateship of fellow souls, with the same Father and same Lord, travelling the same road, towards the same goal.

Thank God for the very very good goodness of the one who is not a soul-mate, but better: for he has gone before us on the same road and so we follow in his footsteps. For when we walk in the shadow of the valley of death, when we join the black parade, where mates cannot accompany us, still we shall not fear, for there our Shepherd is beside us (Psalm 23).