Table of Contents Title Page Welcome to the Kitchen What is Amish Friendship Bread? The Original Amish Friendship Bread Recipe and Instructions Pantry Essentials PART ONE: THE BASICS Amish Friendship Bread Starter Amish Friendship Bread Homemade Vanilla Pudding Homemade Chocolate Pudding Cinnamon-Sugar Mixture Cocoa-Sugar Mixture PART TWO: THE RECIPES Apple Cranberry Amish Friendship Bread Apple Flax Amish Friendship Bread Apple Raisin Amish Friendship Bread Apple Spice Amish Friendship Bread Banana Nut Amish Friendship Bread Banana Split Amish Friendship Bread Berry Cheesecake Amish Friendship Bread Blueberry Mango Amish Friendship Bread Blueberry Oat Bran Amish Friendship Bread Muffins Blueberry Walnut Amish Friendship Bread with Easy Lemon Drizzle Butterscotch Amish Friendship Bread Café Mocha Chip Amish Friendship Bread Caramel Apple Amish Friendship Bread Carrot Cake Amish Friendship Bread Chai Latte Amish Friendship Bread Cupcakes Cherry Almond Amish Friendship Bread Cherry Cheesecake Amish Friendship Bread Chocolate Cherry Almond Amish Friendship Bread Chocolate Chip Cherry Amish Friendship Bread Chocolate Mint Amish Friendship Bread Chocolate Turtle Amish Friendship Bread Coffee-Toffee Amish Friendship Bread Cranberry Orange Amish Friendship Bread Cranberry Upside Down Amish Friendship Bread Cranberry Walnut Flax Amish Friendship Bread Muffins Double Chocolate Amish Friendship Bread Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie Amish Friendship Bread Hazelnut Cappuccino Amish Friendship Bread Cake Lemon Poppyseed Amish Friendship Bread Muffins Mandarin Orange Amish Friendship Bread Mandarin Orange Chocolate Amish Friendship Bread Mexican Hot Chocolate Amish Friendship Bread Mocha Fudge Amish Friendship Bread Cake Morning Glory Amish Friendship Bread Muffins Peaches and Cream Amish Friendship Bread Pineapple Carrot Cake Amish Friendship Bread Pineapple Macadamia Nut Amish Friendship Bread Pistachio Amish Friendship Bread Pumpkin Spice Amish Friendship Bread Raisin Bran Amish Friendship Bread Raspberry Ginger Oat Bran Amish Friendship Bread Muffins Rhubarb Walnut Amish Friendship Bread Rosemary Lemon Olive Oil Amish Friendship Bread Strawberry Amish Friendship Bread Triple Chocolate Coconut Amish Friendship Bread Triple Lemon Amish Friendship Bread Vanilla Caramel Latte Amish Friendship Bread White Chocolate Almond Craisin Amish Friendship Bread White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cheesecake Amish Friendship Bread Zucchini Amish Friendship Bread PART THREE: TOPPINGS AND GLAZES Caramel Glaze Cream Cheese Frosting Easy Lemon Drizzle Easy Vanilla Frosting Nutella Buttercream Frosting Simple Stresuel Topping Vanilla Glaze PART FOUR: SHARING AND GIFTING YOUR BREAD Sharing and Gifting Your Amish Friendship Bread Frequently Asked Questions Acknowledgments Index: At a Glance Bonus Recipe from More Amish Friendship Bread Recipes: Artisan Breads, Biscotti, Cookies, Pancakes, and More Christmas Stollen Amish Friendship Bread Bonus Recipe from Amish Friendship Bread Recipes With A Twist Rustic Potato Amish Friendship Bread Also Available Copyright Quick and Easy Amish Friendship Bread Recipes An Amish Friendship Bread Primer with Over 50 Recipes to Bake and Share With Others A Friendship Bread Kitchen Cookbook Welcome to the Kitchen A Note from Darien Gee "Friendship is the bread of the heart." Mary Russell Mitford The Friendship Bread Kitchen was born in 2009 while I was doing research for my novel, Friendship Bread. The mission was simple: meet like-minded people who loved Amish Friendship Bread as much as I did, and maybe even swap a few recipes. As the weeks progressed, the Kitchen started to grow. You know how Amish Friendship Bread starter bubbles and froths and then almost doubles in size? That’s what was happening in the Kitchen. New people showed up every day. I posted literary quotes about friendship, found funny videos and inspiring blog posts about all things Amish Friendship Bread. I met lots of terrific people. I added more recipes and pictures of the bread. I met even more terrific people. We kept growing and growing. We now have an online and Facebook community that’s over 75,000 Kitchen Friends strong. I’ve gone on to write more novels in the bestselling Friendship Bread series, and our website has become the go-to place for all things Amish Friendship Bread. It’s my goal to make sure you have lots of choices on how to use your one cup of starter, whether it was passed on to you or if you made it yourself. Quick and Easy Amish Friendship Bread Recipes: Over 50 Amish Friendship Bread Recipes to Bake and Share with Others contains many of my favorite Amish Friendship Bread variations, plus a few glazes and frostings. Many of the recipes offer an “At-a-Glance” feature, which means that finding your next Amish Friendship Bread recipe is super quick and easy—just glance at the short list of substitutions, additions or omissions as indicated to decide which recipe is right for you. Every recipe yields two loaves, so consider keeping one and sharing the other with a friend, family member, co-worker, postal carrier, teacher, even a stranger! The spirit of the bread is what’s kept it going all this time, and sharing what we have with others is part of what makes our human experience great. So pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and have fun choosing and experimenting with a recipe that may be new for you. Welcome to the Friendship Bread Kitchen! What is Amish Friendship Bread? "The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship." William Blake Amish Friendship Bread is about friendship and community. It’s about connection, it’s about fun. It’s about sharing what you have with others, about nurturing other people. It’s about not taking anything too seriously, but finding the simple joy and pleasure in every moment. Amish Friendship Bread is, in short, a recipe for living. If you were to look up Amish Friendship Bread on Wikipedia, you’d find this: “Amish Friendship Bread is a type of bread or cake made from a sourdough starter that is often shared in a manner similar to a chain letter. The starter is a substitute for baking yeast and can be used to make many kinds of yeast-based breads, shared with friends, or frozen for future use.” If you were to ask a real live person who has made Amish Friendship Bread, you might hear something like this: “It’s a gloopy, unappetizing substance in a bag that you mash for ten days before baking the most heavenly bread in the world.” Amish Friendship Bread operates on a similar principle as a (culinary) chain letter–“pass it on”–but with no threats or negative repercussions if you choose not to participate. You receive a bag of starter (which usually equals 1 cup) and stir or mash it for 10 days. On Day 6 and Day 10, you “feed” it with flour, sugar and milk. At the end of the ten days, you divide it into equal portions of 1 cup each, bake with one portion, and give the others away along with a copy of the recipe. This usually hums along nicely for the first cycle or two, but eventually people will start running in the other direction if you keep showing up on their doorstep with a fresh batch of starter. You have been warned. The starter is a sourdough starter, a yeast-based starter with a lactobacillus culture. Because there’s so much sugar in most Amish Friendship Bread recipes, the result is sweet, rather than sour, but if you have a discriminating palate you may be able to pick up a tangy twist. Like most sourdough starters, Amish Friendship Bread can literally be passed around indefinitely; in fact, the longer it has been around, the better. The original recipe is a delicious cinnamon raisin loaf that is still one of my favorites. But what I love about the starter is that you can bake almost anything with it. If you’ve received a starter from someone, there’s a little bit of flour and love from their kitchen, as well as all the other kitchens before it. It’s a bit like the children’s fable of stone soup, where everyone ends up contributing something to a meal that is shared by all. Is Amish Friendship Bread really Amish? That’s the big question. There’s no evidence to support this claim and a similar recipe can be found circulating in Europe under the name Herman bread or cake. But it makes sense that the starter is kept at room temperature (since the Amish don't use electricity) and the only fresh ingredients are those that they can easily procure from their own farms (eggs, milk, butter). Then again, the most popular version circulating around North America includes instant pudding, which doesn’t seem very Amish. I’ll leave it to the pundits to debate the question, but there’s no doubt the bread embraces the Amish principle of sharing what we have with others. In my mind, it’s no coincidence that each recipe yields two loaves. This recipe was designed to be shared. Every recipe yields two loaves, so consider keeping one and sharing the other with a friend, family member, co-worker, postal carrier, teacher, even a stranger! The spirit of the bread is what’s kept it going all this time, and sharing what we have with others is part of what makes our human experience great. The Original Amish Friendship Bread Recipe This is the recipe that has circulated through the United States and Europe for several decades. Since the version I received read a bit like a Chinese fortune cookie, typos and all, I’ve modified it for clarity. A PDF printable version of this recipe is available on the Friendship Bread Kitchen website: http://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/amish-friendship-bread. NOTE: Do not refrigerate the starter. It is normal for the batter to rise and ferment. If air gets into the bag, let it out. Day 1: Do nothing. Day 2: Mash the bag. Day 3: Mash the bag. Day 4: Mash the bag. Day 5: Mash the bag. Day 6: ADD to the bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk. Mash the bag. Day 7: Mash the bag. Day 8: Mash the bag. Day 9: Mash the bag. Day 10: Follow the directions below: 1. Pour the entire bag into a nonmetal bowl. 2. Add 1½ cup flour, 1½ cup sugar, 1½ cup milk. 3. Reserve 1 cup of starter in the bowl if you plan to bake today. 4. Divide the remaining batter into 1-gallon Ziploc bags with 1 cup per bag. Your starter may yield 4 to 7 cups depending on how active your starter has been. Give the bags to friends along with a copy of the recipe and several slices of the bread. Label your Ziploc bag with the date, making your Day 10 their Day 1. If you aren’t able to give it to them on Day 1, be sure to tell them which day it is when you present it to them. BAKING INSTRUCTIONS 1. Preheat oven to 325° F (165° C). 2. To the one cup of batter in the bowl add the following: 3 eggs