Cake on Judgement Day

No, I have not become a born-again (actually, I guess it would be 'born for the first time') fanatic Christian. I have just been thinking about how much I tend to judge people. On the weekend our friends David and Jenn got married and being around them reminded me of how open they are to new people and how they don't seem to form any preconceptions about people they meet. They are truly great people in many ways, but this is something about them in particular that I definitely aspire to.

These people are not David and Jenn.

David's telling me "I really look forward to getting to know you better" was really refreshing because so often people make snap judgments and simply think that you are how you look and their expectations of you form your personality for them before you even get a chance to be yourself. (Whew, you can tell I'm worked up about something when the sentence is longer than it really should be.) I'm probably the most judgmental person I know, but I also get misjudged constantly. Sure, I knit, wear cardigans and adore my cat, but I also swear like a truck driver and enjoy conversations about Feminism, semantics and/or masturbation. I know just as well as the next guy that having someone else's incorrect or incomplete definition of you shoved down your throat is so goddamn frustrating.

So why can't I let go of snap-judging? Because not being judgmental is a skill; it's not something humans are born with. You can't just tell yourself "I'm not going to think anything about this person until they give me a reason to" and have that happen consistently forevermore. Actually, maybe it's even an art. Hell, I don't know, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here.

What I'm trying to say is that everything is not as it seems: there's always more to the story. This is really more of a reminder for me than anything else.

And now for the "cake" part of this post:

For quite a while my brother was in a relationship with a wonderful person, Sophia, who happened to be the daughter of an amazing cook- May. Our families got quite close and sometimes we would be fortunate enough to visit when May was cooking an authentic Chinese feast. I'm not sure why, because I'm sure she would have great success, but May never liked to make dessert. She probably just spent so much energy on dinner that by the time dessert came around she simply had nothing left. The reason doesn't matter, really, because most times we went to dinner (and dessert) at the Xiang residence we would be treated to an amazing Chinese Bakery cake.

This cake is, I will have you know, quite different from normal cakes. It is an extremely light and only slightly sweet sponge leavened with eggs (no baking powder) and iced with gelatin-stabilized whipped cream, which is a helluva lot tastier than it sounds. Usually the cake is decorated with fresh fruit and sometimes draped with very thinly-sliced mango. I had (curiously) forgotten about this ambrosial cake until I stumbled across a recipe for it on a lovely food blog that I frequent. I knew I had to make it sometime, so I bookmarked it for the right occasion, which came around this weekend for GP's birthday. I made a mango/blackberry version:If you don't trust the pictures above (I wouldn't blame you- the lighting leaves a lot to be desired), I can tell you myself that the cake came out very very well. If you're considering making the cake yourself, you might be interested to know that 4/5 of a cup is 2/3 cup plus three tablespoons, for the sugar measurement (so that's 1/3 cup plus 1.5 tbsp. when you split it in half, as the recipe calls for). Also, you should make sure your forearms are strong because there is a LOT of folding to incorporate all those egg whites!

GP had an excellent weekend food-wise, if I do say so myself, because on the morning of Saturday (his real birthday, but also Jenn and David's wedding day, so we saved the birthday dinner for tonight) I made him wholewheat Belgian waffles with an apple-blueberry-ginger compote and, of course, whipped cream. Behold:
Fucking YUM.