Friendship bread

If you've ever heard of or made Amish friendship bread, you know the general idea. You get a starter bag from a friend, which you watch over for about 10 days, adding a few ingredients around day five. Then you pour it into a bowl, add more ingredients to create four more starter bags, one of which you keep and the other three you give to friends. Finally, you add a bunch of ingredients to what's left in the bowl, and bake up three loaves of delicious bread.

If you've only ever had friendship bread while living in an average sized city or town (not a small community like Ocracoke), you probably haven't had any challenges with the process. Around here, getting all the ingredients turned out to be impossible for me. When I went to the Community Store and discovered they didn't have any vanilla instant pudding mix, I didn't think anything of it. When I went from there to the Variety Store and learned that they, too, didn't have any vanilla instant pudding mix, I realized it was a pattern. And then it hit me: of course both stores are out of vanilla pudding mix! Every 10 days, an increasing number of people is coming in here to buy it so they can make their friendship bread.

The solution? I made CHOCOLATE Amish friendship bread. It is insanely delicious. I have two starter kits (one's already taken), so let me know if you want one. (The starter isn't chocolate...you can make it chocolate or vanilla, or any other available pudding mix flavor, for that matter!)