Amish Friendship Bread ~ Mixed-Up Muffins

September 11, 2007 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Cooking

batter for amish friendship bread ~ one to keep and some to pass on!

Dear Nupur of One Hot Stove kindly offered to send me some starter for Amish Friendship Bread. I’m always looking for a reason to practice my baking, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. It sounded almost like a “sweet” sourdough starter — if that’s not an oxymoron! I anxiously awaited my package, and following the enclosed instructions, on the tenth day I set out to bake.

Trust me to have no clue what I have on hand for sugar. Some people might use a five-pound bag of sugar in a week, or a month — I rarely use one in a year. As usual I should have checked for ingredients before I began. As it happened, it ended up an enlightening experiment. I substituted some cooked plantains and jaggery for the sugar and egg I was lacking, and I really enjoyed the results. Thanks so much for sharing this fun project with me, Nupur!

ingredients for mixed-up muffins: Amish Friendship starter, jaggery and mashed cooked plantain, eggs, nuts and dried cherries

muffins ready for the oven

I followed the original directions that Nupur sent me to “grow” the starter, and then adapted this muffin recipe from Vicki Henderson of Vancouver, Washington.

Mixed-Up Muffins with Amish Friendship Bread Starter

Ingredients 1:

1 cup starter for Amish Friendship Bread
1/2 cup canola oil
1/2 c plantain, microwaved in 1/4 c water, mashed and mixed with
1/2 c jaggery
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Ingredients 2:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup canola oil
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c sugar

Mix ingredients 1 together in one bowl. Mix ingredients 2 together in a larger bowl. Mix 1 into 2 and blend everything well to make the muffin batter.

Add:

1/2 cup toasted nuts (I used cashews and charoli nuts)
3/4 c dried fruits, plumped in 1/2 c hot water and drained (I used cherries)

Mix the nuts and fruits into the muffin batter. Put into lined muffin tins.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 15-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I used little of the cherry liquid to thin this batter, and it made a dozen JUMBO muffins. I am sure many more muffins of the smaller variety can be made with this generous amount of batter 😉

Very yummy hot from the oven with some chilled butter.

~~~

In keeping with the tradition, I am passing the starter along to:

Lovely Latha of Masala Magic ~ who has been such a dear friend to me here in the land o’ blogs and continually inspires me with her fabulous dosas and more!

Multi-talented mm ~ also a dear friend, wonderful in kitchen and workshop, and always willing to try something new!

And my colleague A ~ another dear friend and very talented baker who also keeps me sane on work days!

Thanks all!

muffins cooling

fresh-from-the-oven treat: muffin and butter

Permalink