Lapis Legit

We recently had a multicultural cook-off at work, where we brought in dishes from different cultures. I committed to bringing an Indonesian dish, so the night before the contest I was searching online for recipes. The problem is, all the recipes involved ingredients that I’d never heard of, and probably wouldn’t find at 11PM in the international section of Kroger. But then, I finally found the winner: Lapis Legit, or “Thousand Layer Cake.”

The thing with this cake is that I’d never made it, seen it, or tasted it before. I’d never even heard of the spices that went into it: Anise Seed? Cardamon???

You’re also supposed to literally babysit it. You bake it one layer at a time, taking the cake out of the oven every 2 minutes to add another layer.

And the biggest risk is that I wouldn’t get to taste or even slice the thing until the actual time of the contest. I was just taking Rita for her word that this really was an amazing recipe. (Rita’s the woman who submitted the recipe online. Come to think of it, Rita doesn’t sound like a native Indonesian name. Hmmm…)

What I learned about doing something I’ve never done before is that it REALLY helped to stick to the recipe - to follow each measurement, ingredient, and step, word for word. Despite it being my first time, as long as I had faith in Rita and the instructions that she gave, I was confident that I wouldn’t poison anyone.

Lately there are a lot of things that God is calling me, and people around me, to do for the first time ever - things that we’ve never done before, things that involve risks and give no guarantees. I realized that if we just follow the instructions God has given us in His ‘recipe book’ (a.k.a. the Bible) and have full confidence in the author (God, not Rita), we can have peace and confidence along the unpaved way.

Oh yeah, whatever happened with the Lapis Legit? It won 1st place!