Amish Friendship Bread

On April 1 (insert your own joke here), a colleague at the Times offered up some Amish Friendship Bread starter. After reading his e-mail about the offer, I knew I certainly was going to go grab some. Then I looked at the recipe. 3 1/2 cups of sugar. A cup of oil. 4 1/2 cups of flour. Ugh. This was not going to be good for my diet. So I reconsidered.

But that starter kept popping into my line of view. I looked at the directions again, pretended to ignore all the unhealthy stuff, and thought some more about it. It certainly looked easy. And sounded delicious. But the best part of the recipe, as I examined it, was that it would allow me to do some cooking with Emma, my 4-year-old chef-in-training. So I reconsidered once more and decided to take it home. It was absolutely the right decision.

I told my little cook about the bread the next morning. It takes 10 days of ripening (or maturing, or whatever it specifically does) until it can be baked. So, for the next nine days, we mostly were going to mush the starter. Emma could not be more exited for April 10 to get here. In fact, on Day 4 -- a Saturday morning -- she woke me at 7:45 a.m. and informed me that I would not need to mush the bread, that she had already done so. And so it went until today, Day 10.

This morning, we mixed up our own starters -- our starter makes four, one for us and three to give to friends. She and her dad delivered one to her preschool pal and her mom, and later we found homes for the other two. After school, we mixed all the remaining ingredients together and put our two loaves in the oven to bake. Only 27 more minutes (plus cooling time) 'til we get to have a taste. It smells incredible in my kitchen right now! But the best part of this recipe is that it provided fun in the kitchen for my daughter and me -- even sweeter!

Since this is a starter that needs to be passed on, I cannot offer a recipe. However, I am including a bread recipe that is not only easy, but fun to share with a friend.

This recipe is from a 2003 issue of Cooking Light magazine.

Marbled chocolate banana bread

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (about 3 bananas)
1/2 cup egg substitute
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl, mixing with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended, about 1 minute. Add banana, egg substitute and yogurt; beat until blended. Add flour mixture; beat at low speed until just moist.

Place chocolate chips in a medium microwave-safe bowl, and microwave on HIGH 1 minute or until almost melted, stirring until smooth. Cool slightly. Add 1 cup batter to chocolate, stirring until well combined. Spoon chocolate batter alternately with plain batter into an 8 1/2-by-4 1/2 inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 75 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

Cook's notes: I've made this before without melting the chocolate chips, just mixing them in with the flour. It turns out just as delicious. Alternately, 1 ounce of finely chopped chocolate works well, too (we prefer Ghirardelli at our house). For a little extra treat, 1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts are a good addition, too.