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I arrived to show Kenniston Hill Inn in Boothbay, Maine and the innkeeper just made a loaf of Amish Cinnamon Bread. If you haven’t heard of that before, it’s a starter that apparently only the Amish can create. It’s a chain letter of sorts but with food. It’s passed on and on… It was similar to a cinnamon coffee cake and felt heavy but didn’t taste heavy. It’s a great cake to go with tea or coffee. And my favorite coffee has long been Rock City Roasters in Rockland, Maine. I now have a second favorite, Bard Coffee in Portland, Maine.

So I left there with a starter batch and instructions on caring for it for the following 9 days before turning it into a sweet bread with a texture similar to banana bread. And because it’s my nature to take a recipe and change it to make it my own, that’s what I did. I’ll give you both the original recipe and my recipe.

So you’ve been given a starter bag… Here are your instructions:

Note: Do not use wood or metal spoon, bowl or pan, glass or plastic only; do NOT refrigerate, it’s normal for the batter to bubble, rise and ferment, just let the air out and zip the bag again.

• Day 1 you receive your bag, just let it sit and label it Day 1
• Day 2 mush the  bag, let the air out
• Day 3 repeat
• Day 4 repeat
• Day 5 repeat
• Day 6 add to the bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk, mix well
• Day 7 mush the bag, let the air out
• Day 8 repeat
• Day 9 repeat
• Day 10 follow the instructions below:

1. Pour the contents of the bag into a large glass or plastic bowl.
2. Add 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups sugar, 1.5 cups milk, whisk well.
3. Label four 1 gallon Ziploc bags with “Day 1″ and date. Fill each bag with 1 cup of the starter mixture. Pass three along to others and keep one for yourself.
4. Preheat oven to 325
5. To the remaining batter (the one you’ve kept):

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups flour
• 1 large box instant vanilla pudding

Grease two large loaf pans. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar in the pan to dust the inside. Pour batter evenly into the pans and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean.

NOW, for MY variation:

I substituted chocolate pudding for vanilla pudding; I omitted the baking soda and the cinnamon in the batter and I put the batter into two 10 inch round scalloped edge baking dishes. I added a ring of chocolate chips, cranberries, pecans and several dollops of cinnamon filling to the center. Then baked them for about 50 minutes and cut into wedges. I tasted it warm and cool and both were very good. I suspect that by leaving out the baking soda, the baking powder alone allowed the cake to be a bit more airy and rise more than it would with baking soda as well. The texture of this cake was a cross between a coffee cake and a devils food cake.

ENJOY!

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I recently had an office party to attend and the criteria for our Yankee Gift Swap was that it had to be edible and/or consumable. Immediately I thought CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES. I make mine with dark rum (preferably Captain Morgan but I didn’t have any on hand so I used regular dark rum), and espresso. And I love to roll them in a variety of things, from the standard cocoa or confectioner’s sugar, to toasted coconut, almonds, nonpareils and chocolate jimmies. By the way, a Dirt Devil does a great job on those nonpareils when they fall all over the place.

I had been thinking of ways to create a chocolate box to hold the truffles but it didn’t take long before I decided a chocolate bowl would be much easier and less time consuming. I dipped small balloons in chocolate and set them aside to cool. One I rolled completely in nonpareils, the other I only rimmed the top portion of the bowl. As they were cooling, I thought I’d use one to hold a variety of the rolled truffles, the other I filled with truffle mixture as if it were a giant, solid truffle half.

My husband came up with a fantastic idea of a chocolate hand to hold the bowl of truffles. I was on it STAT! First I tried a pink dishwashing glove (for the photo op I added a diamond – you know, girl’s best friend!) but realized I wouldn’t be able to let it harden with my hand in it. So I filled it with sugar, assuming that once firm, I’d simply pour the sugar out of the glove and the glove would slip right out of the chocolate. WRONG. And I even sprayed with vegetable oil. Chocolate hand failure #1…you see where I’m headed? Hubby said to use a latex glove that I could blow up, you know, like Howie Mandel? So I did. It wasn’t the most shapely hand, but it would suffice. When I dipped the latex balloons, one I sprayed and one I did not, both came out fine. However, I think where there is pressure, spray wouldn’t matter. So I chose not to spray the hand (it’s difficult to get chocolate to stick to a greased piece of latex) and dipped away. I set it on a wax lined sheet pan to cool in the fridge.

In the meantime, I made my truffles while the chocolate hand and bowl were cooling.

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES:

12 oz bittersweet chocolate chips (I prefer Sharffenberger chocolate) set aside in a large mixing bowl

2/3 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon dark rum

1 teaspoon espresso powder (instant)

Heat the cream and espresso in a heavy saucepan until just boiling. Add the rum and remove from heat. Pour over chocolate chips and stir until completely melted and combined (should appear shiny). Refrigerate for a few hours until firm enough to roll. I use a very small Oxo cookie scoop for easy release. Roll quickly (to avoid warming the chocolate too much) and roll in your choice of coatings. Let chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Truffles can sit at room temperature, but they will soften quite a bit.

So, back to the chocolate hand. The second one. I knew something wasn’t right when I pulled it out of the fridge and saw that some of the air had escaped the glove. When I cut the knot, there was no depressurization therefore the glove didn’t immediately pull away from the chocolate as I had hoped. Hmmm….I tried to gently pull that glove out of the hand. But it wouldn’t budge. Chocolate hand failure #2. But I stopped there, I ran out of time.

So one chocolate bowl held a variety of truffles, the other was filled with solid truffle. But to that mixture I added almonds, cranberries and toasted coconut and filled the bowl. But I still had melted chocolate left…what else could I dip? I dipped pretzels. I dipped apples in caramel and then in chocolate (and rolled them in toasted almonds). And still I had melted chocolate. I poured the chocolate into a squeeze bottle and piped out some table decorations for the party. Naturally I had to do a chocolate swan for The Swan Agency Sotheby’s International Realty for throwing the party! And for fun, I added a REALTOR symbol along with $ and a Happy Holidays! Can you tell I love chocolate?