God lives in Me!

Wow. What an awesome thought.
And what an awesome task of compiling this information into a blog.
I'm excited!

So, what brings me to this message was a little pamphlet I picked up from church called Our Daily Bread. It is a book of daily devotionals. I personally find them inspirational and it seems to provide lots of spark for things to study and write about.

This particular day, August 30th, 2011, Albert Lee speaks of a triathlon participant who not only brought himself, but his disabled son through the events. His father pulled him in a boat while he swam, he was in a seat pod on the bike, and was pushed while his father ran. This man, Rick, in his wheelchair was dependent on his father to finish that race.

We are dependent on Christ to proceed with ours.

"We cannot finish the Christian race on our own. We have to do so by depending on Jesus living in us." ~Albert Lee

So I died to the law-I stopped trying to meet all its requirements-so that I might live for God. My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthy body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. Galatians 2:19-21

Christ Liveth in Me

As lives the flower within the seed, As in the cone the tree, So, praise the God of truth and grace, His Spirit dwelleth in me. Refrain: Christ liveth in me, Christ liveth in me, O what a salvation this,— That Christ liveth in me. Once far from God and dead in sin, No light my heart could see; But in God's word the light I found, Now "Christ liveth in me." As rays of light from yonder sun The flowers of earth set free, So life and light and love came forth From "Christ living in me." With longing all my heart is filled, That like Him I may be, As on the wondrous thought I dwell, That "Christ liveth in me."

Major Daniel Webster Whittle (1840-1901)

(I look forward to performing this...)

Faith connects our weakness to God’s strength.

I have been then gazing at my treasure of a book, In His Steps, by J.R. Miller. I was looking for inspiration for dealing with conflict and trying to grapple with the idea that many people believe that Christianity is based on a one time forgiveness of sins and cleansing of your soul, that from then on you will do no wrong. Or that you must be doing right. Phew. This one bugs me.

From Chapter three, "Forgiveness of sins is not enough. A man's lies and dishonesties may be forgiven; but if that is all, he is still a liar and dishonest. God's forgiveness regenerates. A Christian life is the setting up of the Kingdom of God in a human heart."

"This puts a responsibility on every Christian. We represent God in this world, and we are to live in such a way that from our life, others will learn the truth about God."


AMEN!

Within us all when we ask, is the light of God, which is present and connecting us all together in love. Let it Shine! Then as you grow stronger in faith through study and challenging your old habits and behaviors, your light grows brighter. And we make our aim to be as close as we can to this ideal of living like Christ.

We cannot actually achieve perfection, hence Christ's existence. We can only do our best to remain focused on living as if we could feel that Christ was in our heart's loving us. Then letting that love overflow into the world from within. You have what you need inside you already. And if you ask, the light can begin to shine where you have dark places.

I was brought to this all really while preparing my Sunday school lesson. The suggested song to sing for this week's gospel was This Little Light of Mine. Scripture tells a story that Jesus told for His teaching of a group of ten bridesmaids who were waiting for the arrival of the bridegroom for the festivities to begin. Five were well prepared and went to sleep with full lamps and extra oil. Five were not and their lamps ran low. In the middle of the night the bridegroom arrives and asks them to assemble. The five with no oil, ask the five with to share. They decline and suggest that the five maids go to buy their own oil. While they are away, the five prepared maids and the bridegroom begin to celebrate.
The five that went for more oil were not let in and were treated as unknown when they arrived.

Jesus urges us to be ready with a full lamp and extra oil. You never know when it will be the time you need it. Build your foundations, grow your light, do what you do well and with all of the love you can.

White Cake with Almond Flair...

Simple White Cake w/Almond Sugar Glaze.

1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c butter (softened)
2 eggs
2 tsp almond extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 c milk (I use almond milk)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour pan or use cupcake liners.

In a medium bowl, cream together sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time and blend. Stir in Almond extract. Combine flour and baking powder and add to the creamed mixture, blend well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cakes for about 30-40 min depending on the size and cupcakes about 20-25 minutes. I cooked these mini cupcakes for 15 minutes and they were great! Cakes are done when they spring back to the touch.

Glaze Icing
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
2 1/2 tsp milk
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 tsp butter (melted)

Blend ingredients together and add water if needed to make consistency more spreadable. Only a dab of water at a time.

When cool ice the cakes/cupcakes and enjoy!
Easy and better than any box cupcake out there!

Baking! Oh How I love thee.

I personally love baking, decorating, inventing and adjusting to make the yummiest treats possible. Here's the kicker...I try and make the most tasty treats that are also the healthiest. So I begin with recipes in books or from the internet and then I adjust.

I must admit as healthy as I like to be there are some recipes I do not mess with. Some from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook are too delectable to try and be overly healthy! Like Grandma's Sweet Potato Pie and Cream Cheese Fruit Tartlets. Oh my!

I often substitute applesauce for oil, I use only the best eggs and high quality ingredients whenever possible. Even though sugar can be found unprocessed and in its purest form, too much is not so good. I try to reduce the amount of sugar in my recipes but not sacrifice flavor by using almond extract instead of vanilla. Just some tricks I picked up trying different things and sharing my creations.

I have created a gluten free chocolate cake recipe that when iced tastes to me just like a chocolate glazed Dunkin Donuts donut. Only without all the excess fat, gluten and the sugar I use is high quality, unrefined sugar.

I always seem to have enough batter to make a loaf pan cake and 6 extra large cupcakes each time!

Amen to loving the art of baking!

I am hoping that once I get consistent results each batch, that this gluten free recipe will become so popular people will pay me to bake for them!
I cannot wait to begin planning for Christmas cookies. I had so much fun last year! I think I made about 8 different types of cookie in a frenzy one day but they were baked with joy and love and I know those who ate them felt it! Awesome.


We had a bake sale recently at my church, and I baked an Iced Banana Carob Chip Loaf. It was so good! I've never used carob in a recipe before and I was so pleased with the way it tasted with the banana.

I also have some baking pumpkins ready to cook up and make some stock for pumpkin pies and breads!

Ok...so today Wednesday Nov. 2nd, I decided to make my fabulous cupcakes! 2 dozen mini cupcakes. Perfect for bite size treats, iced or not, totally great recipe! I use almond extract for both the cake batter and icing giving them a little nutty sweetness. It is one of the easiest recipes to remember, follow and whip up whenever needed. I will share it in it's own blog...now!



I use Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Baking Flour to replace the regular flour when I bake these days. I put this into my Simple White Cake recipe and found that it worked pretty well. I think it changes the consistency which can be addressed using Xanthan Gum apparently. I think I would also add a little applesauce. This is a wet ingredient and would require adding an approximate amount of dry ingredient to equal it out. I would probably say I will try a 1/4 cup of applesauce and an extra 1/4 flour. I am going to get the Xanthan Gum to try to work on maintaing that fluffy cake form!

All in all these were good cupcakes! The icing was the same and still complimented the recipe nicely.