Friendship Cake-Amish

A chain-recipe classic from Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch kitchens. This spiced bundt cake is built around a brandied fruit starter, which you maintain in a jar on the counter for weeks like a sourdough starter, feeding it with sugar and sharing cups with friends who want to bake their own. Hence the name.

The starter is drained canned peaches, apricots, pineapple, and maraschino cherries fermented with sugar and brandy for 3 weeks. Once active, it becomes a tangy, boozy, deeply fruity base for cakes, puddings, and ice cream toppings. The cake itself is a standard spice bundt with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pecans, and 2 cups of the brandied fruit stirred into the batter.

Bake, cool, slice. The crumb stays moist for days thanks to all that fruit and brandy. Gift a mason jar of starter to a neighbor with instructions and keep the chain going.

Pro Tips

• Use a glass or ceramic non-reactive bowl for the starter, never metal. Brandy and fruit acids react with aluminum and stainless in ways that affect flavor.
• Stir the starter gently with a wooden spoon twice a week. Aggressive stirring breaks the fruit into mush.
• When you use some of the starter, replace the cup you took with 1 cup sugar and let sit 3 days before using again. This keeps the fermentation going.
• Grease the bundt pan with butter and dust with flour or sugar. Fruit-heavy batter sticks notoriously to detailed bundt pan ridges.

Variations

• Use different canned fruits like mandarin orange segments or pears for a seasonal starter.
• Swap brandy for dark rum, bourbon, or Grand Marnier in the starter for different depth.
• Add a glaze made from powdered sugar and brandied fruit juice over the cooled cake.