3/2/2008 Amish Friendship Bread AKA Cinnamon-Sugar Coffee Cake, and Chocolate Chocolate Chip Bread Variant From: Derek Adair & Jen Van Dijk Do not use metal spoons, pans, or bowls for mixing. (I forgot, and used a metal mixing bowl, which did not seem to have any noticeable adverse effects.) Do not refrigerate. Day 1 - Do nothing Day 2-5 - Mash the bag Day 6 - Add to the bag: 1 cup flour 1 cup sugar 1 cup milk Mash the bag well to mix. (Might want to move the bag into a large bowl, in case the bag expands too far and opens itself.) Day 7-9 - Mash the bag, let out air. Day 10 - Divide the starter & bake the bread Divide the Starter: 1. Pour entire contents into bowl. Add: 1 1/2 cups flour 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 1/2 cups milk 2. Measure out four separate bags of one cup each of batter into four one gallon zip lock bags. Keep a starter for yourself and give three to friends along with a copy of this recipe. (Note: If you keep a starter you will be baking every 10 days.) The bread is very good and makes a great gift. Only Amish know how to make a starter, so if you give them all away you'll have to wait until someone gives you a starter again. If you do not pass this starter on to a friend on the first day, be sure to tell them which day the batter is at when you give it to them. Baking Instructions: 1. Preheat the oven to 325 F 2. To the remaining batter in the bowl, add: 3 eggs 1 cup vegetable oil 1/2 tsp vanilla 1/2 cup milk 2 tsp cinnamon 1 cup sugar 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 2 cups flour 1 large box of instant vanilla pudding (I added 1.5 - 2 c raisins which were not in the original recipe.) (Might want to try mixing the wet ingredients first, and combining the dry ingredients in another bowl before adding to the wet ingredients, and adding the raisins last and hand mixing them in.) (I used a hand mixer (metal) to mix all of these things. You also need a pretty big mixing bowl to accomodate the ingredients. My 5 qt mixing bowl seemed the right size.) 3. Grease 2 large loaf pans (I used crisco) 4. Mix in a small bowl: 1/2 c sugar 1/2 tsp cinnamon 5. Dust the greased pans with half of the mixture. 6. Pour the batter evenly between the two loaf pans 7. Sprinkle the remaining sugar mixture on top 8. Bake 1 hour. Cool until the bread loosens evenly from the sides of the pans. ------------------------ Hey, for anyone who wants to make chocolate bread instead of regular, here's what to do: Use the same recipe with the following changes Instead of vanilla pudding, vanilla, and cinnamon, use chocolate pudding mix, 3 tsp of cocoa, and 3/4 cup of chocolate chips. Bake for 1.5 hours. I also improvised a mix of a little bit of cocoa (not as much as you would cinnamon, it's really strong) and some sugar to dust the pan, but I don't put any of that on the top. When it's done baking and has cooled considerably, it's an option to dust some powdered sugar (I'm going to try coarse-grained sugar) on the top but that's mostly just for aesthetics.