Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

David and the six hundred men with him came to the Besor Valley, where some stayed behind. Two hundred of them were too exhausted to cross the valley, but David and the other four hundred continued the pursuit.
They found an Egyptian in a field and brought him to David. They gave him water to drink and food to eat—part of a cake of pressed figs and two cakes of raisins. He ate and was revived, for he had not eaten any food or drunk any water for three days and three nights.

• 1 Samuel 30:9-12

At that time Abijah son of Jeroboam became ill, and Jeroboam said to his wife, “Go, disguise yourself, so you won’t be recognized as the wife of Jeroboam. Then go to Shiloh. Ahijah the prophet is there—the one who told me I would be king over this people. Take ten loaves of bread with you, some cakes and a jar of honey, and go to him. He will tell you what will happen to the boy.”

• 1 Kings 14:1-3

Therefore the Moabites wail,
    they wail together for Moab.
Lament and grieve
    for the raisin cakes of Kir Hareseth.

• Isaiah 16:7

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

• Hosea 3:1

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were to host a monthly fellowship at our church, a small group of a little under ten people, but it could easily be a dozen.  We leave most of the leftovers with the church staff.

My wife, with dialysis basically every other day, and exhausted most of the time, she asked what might we bake?  I went on line and saw a Southern Living recipe that looked interesting, someone’s aunt’s apple cake (Auntie’s Apple Cake).  I suggested it to my wife and she said, “You sound enthusiastic.  You bake it.”  She then turned the sound back on the television show that she was watching – I was dismissed.  She later said that she would supervise.

On the day before the event, I had done a lot of cleaning and the kitchen table was laid out with everything that we needed, measuring cups and spoons, mixing bowls and mixer, and the ingredients.

The recipe called for three cups of peeled and diced apples.  They suggested Pink Lady, Grannie Smith, or Honeycrisp, in that order.  With my Deviled Yeggs mysteries featuring Pink Lady Apple Yeggs (Deviled’s sister-in-law), I chose Pink Lady Apples.

The baking day was also a kidney dialysis day for my wife, but she had promised to supervise.

As I helped her into the car, she said, “You’re going to hate me for this, but I’m tired.  When I get home, I want to go straight to bed.”

When she awoke, the cake was baking, and I was scratching my head over the drizzle on top.  What I did not tell her was the cake was the densest cake batter that I had ever seen.  Would the cake batter turn into cake or concrete?

The cake took a lot less time to bake than the recipe said.  I think our oven is either hotter than the setting says or much more efficient than the recipe expects.  Everything cooks in less time.

I cooked the drizzle topping on the stove top.  I was thinking something like caramel, but it had the consistency of praline.  Since pecans were sprinkled over the top, the pool of topping in the center of the Bundt cake became pecan pralines.  Yummy!

The cake slipped out of the cake pan with nothing sticking.  I had worked hard on that in the prep.  My wife had started a baking business forty years ago and she had me prep the pans and sometimes level the cake.  So, I got that right.

My only panic was when the topping never reached the required temperature.  My wife, having awakened, said to go with it anyway.  It worked out fine and the next day, the cake was moist.

I looked up “cake” in the NIV.  There were eleven references.  The ones offered to the Egyptian slave by David, were nourishing.  In 1 Kings, they were an offering of sorts to the prophet.  In Isaiah and Hosea (especially) the idea of sacred raisin cakes meant idol worship.  And, no, there was no image of the false god on the cake.

But I tried to everyone that the cake was a blessing from above and, even then, I got lucky.

I humbly state that I am not a baker, but I might just try something else.  It is getting to be that time of year anyway.

Not much of a theological point here other than we can see God at work and we can glorify Him in the tiniest little things.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.