Amish Friendship Bread, Part II

I like the coffee cake but its really not what I am looking for though a good alternative to make if following the standard directions.  I guess my real issue is that you make a largish quantity of the fermented gak but only put 1 cup in the cake.  I have been baking breads for quit a few years now and know how much flavor is in that fermented goodness.

The direction for the cake are feed it when you receive it 1 Cup each Milk, Sugar and flour.  Stir briskly and then stir every day.  You then feed the mixture again on day five and day 10.  Using the resultant mixture to bake the cake(s) and have enough left over to give to friends.

MY next "experiment will be to use all the resultant sour to bake either a cake or sweetbreads.

there is always enough mixture stuck to the sides to perpetuate the mixture for another round of feeding/baking.  Not sure on a recipe yet but that is the direction I am headed

Bubbly Goodness

"Amish" Honey Cake

Amish Friendship Bread.  The very phrase strikes fear into most bakers.  One of your friends is trying to foist off a cup of gooey sludge saying it makes a great cake.  All you have to do is feed it twice.  Stir it once a day and then bake your little heart out.  Oh, and by the way you'll have enough gak left over to "share" it with your friends.  By share, I mean hard sell like a televangelist with expensive taste in recreation drugs.

Now it is fairley easy, low maintenance and if you dont follow the rules it hardly makes a difference in the final product.  Your friend will usually give you instructions and some recipes to bake.  The cake is not bad, they freeze well and have stead many a bake sale with endless product.

The starter is milk, flour and sugar in a 1:1:1 ratio.  The starter you receive has been passed from friend to friend as is a living yeast culture.  It rises and falls and get a little beery but over all is not too bad.  The cakes are like pound cakes (or should i say 10 lb cakes) in that they are bundtish, heavyish but tasty.

My long interest in these type of cultural phenomena has led to make these on occasion over the years but I have always been dissatisfied with the results.  I mean you only use a cup of the starter but the cake is risen using baking powder.  I wanted to develop a cake that took advantage of the natural yeasts to add some lightness to the cake.  So here then is my "experiment"

Amish Honey Cake

2 1/2 C Flour
1 Tbsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs
1 C Starter (amish friendship bread)
1 C Milk
1 stick (1/4 lb) of butter room temp
1 8oz. Pkg cream cheese room temp.
1 C Sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 C Brown Sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp butter (melted)
1/2 C chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)
2 Tbsp Honey

CAKE:

DRY:
In a bowl mix the 2 1/2 Cups Flour and Tbsp of baking powder, set aside.

WET:
Cream butter and cream cheese well.  Cream in sugar.  Add eggs one at a time mixing well between eggs.  Add cup of starter, milk and vanilla.  Mix until sugar is dissolved.  Add dry ingredients to the wet and blend well (about a minute).  Pour into a greased/floured 13 x 9 x 2 pan.  Set aside.

TOPPING:

Combine brown sugar, cinnamon, 2 Tbsp flour and chopped nuts in a small bowl.  MIxuntil ingredients are combined.  Stir in 2 Tbsp of melted buter with fork.  Make sure butter is worked in well and mixture resembles crumbs.  Spread the topping over the top of the cake.  Measuring out 1 tbsp of honey at a time drizzle the honey all over the topping.

Allow the cake to rise about 2 -3 hours.  This will give the yeast some time to ass some lightness ot the cake.  Bake in a 350° F oven for 40- 50 minutes until cake tests done.  Allow to cool completely before cutting.

Overall the taste is as I expected, it is definitely lighter.  not sure if its due to the action of the yeast or just the baking powder being left alone to do its thing.  I allowed the case to rise for 2 and 1/2 hours.  the finished product is nice and tall.   Moist as I expected.  The topping kind of melted into the cake ans in some cases sank down in it which is good but I had hoped it would cover the top better.

Library Pocket Books

One a year Heirloom Productions brings their rubber stamp/paper arts show to Allentown.  Last year was the first year I went.  I returned this year.  My favorite vendor is The Paper Cut (and their sub-company Paper Creations).  They produce card die cuts, have tons of brightly colored papers, and sell book kits.  Accordion book, concertina book, flip books and my favorite the Library Pocket Book.

The first year I bought two of the pocket books, two concertina books and a flip book.  This year it was a mini memory book, and two more library pocket books.  These Library pocket books are awesome.  So here is the beginning of my project:

My Materials List So far:
COVERS:
Ranger Distress Inks in walnut stain and forest moss
Tsukineko Tuxedo black and Encore Ultimate metallic Gold
Spellbinders Donna Salazar - Sprightly Sprockets
Paper Creations Library Pocket Book Kit in Harvest Variety
Close To My Heart Stamps - Key Moments set.
Avery Dennison Reinforced Hole Shipping Tags #5 tags (4 3/4" x 2 3/8" )

Library Book Covers

Covers, a photo by jdkcubed on Flickr.

Took me about 1.5 hours to do the covers.

Lapbooking for fun and knowledge

One of the 1000 hobbies I like to indulge in is scrapbooking.  It started when my niece was born as a way to preserve history.  But then it grew and I enjoy messing with paper and glue.  I like to make and hand bind my own journals (and have sold a few).  So I am always on the lookout for new ideas.

This year I have been part of the One Little Word project over at bigpictureclasses.com. And while it has been fun, I found it too be too little each month.  I personally think its hard work to find the focus on a particular word for  a year with one or two exercises a month.  So I have been adding more stuff to each month to better keep my focus!

So on to lapbooking.  Lapbooking is a method used mostly by home schoolers for children to focus on a particular area of study.  It boils down to a portfolio of journaling, scrapping, illustrating using muti-media, collage, writing and other techniques to illustrate what they learned about a particular subject.  Then when finished they can always go back and peruse their work.  It helps to re-enforce what was learned.

I think it is the perfect medium for scrapbooking.  Particularly if you are focusing on a specific event, trip, time period or other singular thing you want to incorporate into your scrapping and or life.  A google search on lapbooks will get you hundreds of links but the gist is the same:

• Make a portfolio.  Typically using file folders or poster board or whatever.. Skies the limit
• typical with fold outs, envelopes, pictures, drawings whatever ephemera you would like
• Ability to add small flip book, step books any thing as long as you can access it
• Make, gather or otherwise come by "CONTENT" for your folio based on your focus
• Assemble your content into your portfolio.  When satisfied, move on to the next one.
• Enjoy it.

My idea is to spend a year working on these.  One a Month, with a unifying theme...So...Join me on the adventure over at Lifebooking

One LIttle Word Album

One LIttle Word Album, a set on Flickr.

Here are the pics from my album construction for my previous post!

One Little Word Album

I have joined a class over on Big Picture Classes called One Little Word.  The gist is to pick a single word that is the focus for the year.  Every month there will be exercises and other activities to help you work the word into your life.

The materials for the calls for an 8 1/2 x 11 photo album.  I have looked and searched and found the whole genre wanting in the extreme.  So I decided to make my own album.

Originally I took an old literature binder from work.  Standard 3 ring binder. But the covers were longer so I had hoped it would cover the addition width of the pages (protectors) for the class.  My goal was to uncover the cover boards and recover them with some of the Close To My Heart papers I had planned on using during the class.

No dice!  They were just too small.  So I measured them out made them appropriately bigger and cut them and the spine from some nice Davey Board.  I went to Hobby Lobby and chose two fabrics for the covers and the spine.  Turned them both into book cloth.  Made some book paste.  And pasted the fabrics to the outsides of the covers and spine!

Next I will mount the ring binder to the album, add inside cover papers, Cover the spine with a nice facing of the same color.  Maybe do some corner cocers in the spine color we'll see what I have left!

Here is a link to my flickr gallery for the project!

Related articles

• One Little Word 2012 (aliedwards.com)