Amish Friendship Bread

On Tuesday, I made bread. Lots of bread. Oh so much bread.

My mom gifted me an Amish Friendship Bread starter when I visited my family on Thanksgiving, and who am I to say no to sugar or baking?

It's kind of a long process, with 10 days of mushing and adding ingredients before you can finally bake. And then at the end, you bake a fourth of the batter and give away the rest. Because I didn't want to get stuck in the vicious cycle of eating sugary breads (I have enough of a problem with this already) or trying to give some away three times a month, I made half and gave half away.

Take that, you Amish chain letter!

The printed directions that came with my starter warn that if you don't keep a portion for yourself, you have to wait until someone gives you a new one because only the Amish know how to make it. Clearly this was done before the Internet. How do Amish recipes even get on the Internet? Must be some rogue ex-Amish or something. Ah, those rogues who share deliciousness.

My only complaint with the recipe is that mine calls for large boxes of instant pudding mix, which I don't keep on hand. So I had to go to the store for that one thing, whereas I keep all other ingredients on hand all the time. My half of the batter made 29 regular muffins, 12 mini muffins and a loaf pan of cinnamony bread.

Nomnom. Good thing my hubby and coworkers like this bread because I could not be trusted with it all to myself.