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Friendship Cakes

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Author: Lisa

A friendship cake is what one might call a tasty version of a chain letter. Friendship starters (in several different versions) have been passed from person to person for a couple of hundred years or more.

The idea originated with the Amish before dry yeast could be purchased at the corner market. The basic friendship started is made like this:

* 2/3 cup sugar * 2/3 cup milk * 2/3 cup flour

Mix the ingredients in a glass container with tight lid. Cover the mixture and keep it at room temperature for 17 days. Stir it only once a day.

Leave the mixture undisturbed for 1 day, and then stir again daily for 3 days.

Add 1 cup each of sugar, milk, and flour. Stir once a day for the next 4 days.

Add another cup of each sugar, milk, and flour.

Give 1 cup each to 2 friends. Use 1 cup to make a cake.

The friends who receive the starter mix then add sugar, milk, and flour, and stir the mixture, but the process only requires 10 days when it is begun with a cup of starter. Those two friends then keep one cup of the mixture to make their own cake and pass the remainder on to three friends.

Of course, other ingredients, seasonings, fruit, nuts, spices, etc. are added to the starter to make cakes or bread. Today friendship cake starter mixture is a novelty rather than a needed staple as it was long ago. Today friendship cake starter mixes can be purchased and there are also starter recipes that make use of active dry yeast that can be purchased at any grocery store.

Friendship bread and cakes have a distinctive flavor that cannot be achieved otherwise. The acids that are produced as a by-product of the growing yeast create this wonderful flavor. The acids are the vital part of the flavor compound that gives each cake or loaf of bread its unique taste. These same acids help to preserve the starter by stopping the growth of harmful bacteria.









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