nertz, july twenty something

A few nights ago we had some friends over to play a card came called nertz. It's a super fun game! Our new friends are here with youth apart, the ministry Daniel and Malies started. If you don't recall (and I should NOT be recalling this) I made a hummingbird cake this past year. I put it on the blog and it was a disaster! It had fallen apart when I stacked it. I tried fixing it with icing and it made it worse. Well, I'm not sure what I did differently but it turned out great this time! We decided its now a nertz cake. Being the nice person I can be, I decided to let you in on the secret recipe....

3 cups plain flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 TB cinnamon
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
400 g tin crushed pineapple, drained (i like to use fresh)
1 cup macadamia nuts, chopped
2 cups ripe bananas
225 g plain cream cheese, softened
1 cup butter, room temperature
900g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
2 tsp vanilla
food coloring of choice- optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put flour, sugar, salt, soda and cinnamon together into a mixing bowl. Add eggs and vegetable oil to dry ingredients. Stir until moist. Stir in vanilla, pineapple and macadamia. Stir in bananas.

Spoon batter into three well greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool in pan 10 minutes. Turn out onto cooling racks. Cool completely before frosting.

Combine cream cheese and butter, cream until smooth. Add the icing sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Stir in vanilla. Frost top of cakes then stack and frost sides.

Invite friends over and play nertz!

We also had homemade lemonade with it and it was perfect. An easy way to make....

1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice
cut up a few slices of lemon to float at the top of the lemonade
1 cup of sugar
pour in pitcher and fill up with water

On a different note, been reading compelled by love by Heidi Baker. Amazing book. If I could I'd quote the entire book but this part really stuck out....

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

"How do we become the hands and feet of Jesus to dying humanity? How do we bring comfort? How do we become the kindness, the mercy, of Jesus in a culture that is mourning? And more specifically, how do you become a blessing for the poor? It must be incarnation love!
Every culture has a common denominator of misery and pain. From Korea to Mozambique, and then to Brazil and America, every society has a felt need that we must identify and offer to meet in order to comfort them. A minister's job is not simply to preach on a platform, standing up in front of a crowd of people while a big film crew records the service. This is not our primary purpose. Our job is to love each person, one at a time, to stop and lend help every day for each of the suffering and the sick.
Some say "can we love without money?" The answer is yes. And the simplest way to demonstrate love is to hold someone in your arms, to look them in the eyes, and to offer them a smile. How do you become good news to both the poor and to the rich? How do you become love manifested in physical form and see this gospel fulfilled? If you are called as missionary- a "sent out one"- then you are called to comfort those who mourn. You are called to love the broken until they understand God's love- a love that never dies- through you.
Yes, God wants you to do signs and wonders. But the love of God manifested through you is what people really need. So you must first see his face. You must become so close to His very heartbeat that you can feel what others feel. I want to live as if I am hidden in His very heart, where His thoughts become my thoughts and His ways become my ways. This is how we will reach the world. "

Created for this,
Kimberly