Start a bread dough sponge using flour, water, honey and yeast. Combine a flour mixture containing flour, milk powder and yeast, and then sprinkle that on top the sponge and allow it to ferment for 4 hours. Mix in some softened butter then rest for 20 minutes. Knead in some salt and then allow the dough to rise until doubled, about 1.5 hrs. Turn out the dough and press it down, then let it rise again until doubled, about 1 hr.
Make a filling by boiling some raisins in rum and water, then drain the raisins and reserve the liquid. Melt some butter with brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
Roll dough into 1-inch balls, dip them in the butter-sugar mixture and lay them in an angel food cake pan. Sprinkle on some raisins and pecans. Keep layering until all the dough is used up.
Drizzle on any remaining butter/sugar mixture on top. Cover the pan and let the dough rise for an hour. Continue reading Monkey Bread→
Some friends of ours gave us a bag of the starter batter plus a recipe for this “Amish Friendship Bread”. It’s kind of like a chain letter of baking. You get the starter batter which you feed and care for 10 days. On the 10th day you make a huge batch of batter, divide it up into four parts, bake at least one, and give away the bags of remaining batter along with the recipe.
It’s a nice recipe, more like a cake than a bread. It uses instant vanilla pudding to keep it moist, and cinnamon powder for spice. Some enterprising people sell the recipe on eBay but you can find all kinds of variations of the recipe elsewhere online.
Our neighbor left us a bag of Golden Delicious apples from her tree. Peel, slice, mix with flour, sugar, vegetable oil, walnuts, and cinnamon, then bake. This cake is so good, it cannot last more than a couple of days!
