Friendship Cake, Armenian-Italian style

by Maria Titizian

Published: Friday August 28, 2009 in Food

Friendship Cake.

One day many years ago, my mother came home from work with a recipe she called the Friendship Cake. I must have been 12 or 13 at the time. I don't recall my mother getting excited about baking back then; having to raise three daughters in a country she still couldn't quite comprehend and working in a factory sewing heavy winter coats for a pittance (until they were unionized) didn't lend itself to a lot of time for baking.

My mother learned to speak English while she worked in that factory with hundreds of other immigrant women, primarily from Greece and Italy. Today, my mom speaks English with an Italian accent and it was from her Italian co-­workers, who later became lifelong friends, that she learned about this particular recipe.

Today, the Friendship Cake has become one of our family's long-standing traditions. Perhaps some of you have heard of this particular cake, also known as the Amish Friendship Cake (see below) or Herman Cake, which really dates back to the time of the pioneers in North America.

My mother's recipe is very close to the original mixture of flour, sugar, and water. During my visit with her in Canada I asked her about the cake and she quickly began telling me the story. She fished through her recipes until she found it and as she was reading it to me, she said, "Maria, ­hokis, this is your handwriting!" Sure enough, when I looked at the yellowing paper, there was my 12-year-old's penmanship staring right back at me. A flood of memories, and I was transported back to the day she came home from work, and excitedly dictated the recipe to me so she wouldn't forget it.

The process of baking the cake requires almost two weeks of preparation. The cake begins with a starter, which is the leavening agent; airborne yeast ferments the mixture, which was a staple in bread making for the early pioneers. It is the starter that gives the cake its very distinctive taste. A by-product of the growing yeast is acids that also help preserve the starter by hampering the growth of certain harmful bacteria.

Today people who make the Friendship Cake do it out of novelty or friendship more than out of necessity.

There is a very crucial ritual that one must adhere to when beginning the process of making the cake. My mother mixes one cup of milk, one cup of flour, and one cup of sugar together in a bowl. She lets the mixture sit for five days in a cool place and stirs it once or twice a day with a wooden spoon. On the fifth day, she adds another cup of milk, cup of flour, and cup of sugar and lets it sit for another five days. The mixture becomes a "starter" for the cake. She yet again, adds one cup each of milk, flour, and sugar and lets it sit for another five days.

Before mixing in the rest of the ingredients on the fifteenth and final day, she takes one cup of the starter and gives it to a friend to have the base for making her own cake. She takes a second cup of the starter and gives it to another friend. It becomes something like an edible chain letter.

If the starter is successful, then the following ingredients are added:

6 oz of vegetable oil
3 eggs
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
½ tablespoon cinnamon
½ tablespoon baking soda
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 cup grated apple
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

After mixing all these ingredients with the starter you place the batter in a greased cake pan and bake in the oven for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees.

There are many folk tales about Friendship Cake; those people who were too greedy to share have found that their starter spread to gigantic proportions, soon overtaking the kitchen. After experiencing this disaster, most people were compelled to pass it on.

While some people avoid using milk in the starter to avoid the growth of bacteria, my mother insists that it's completely safe as long as you keep it in a cool place. I think it would be better to refrigerate it, but there's no arguing with an Armenian mother.

Today, 30 years later, my mother's Friendship Cake, which she learned from her Italian friends, has become a tradition among her Armenian friends. Every year her friends begin the process of baking the Friendship Cake in time to have it on their New Year's tables. As my mother has grown older, the circle of friends who make the cake has grown larger and now she receives the starter she once shared with them. For her, the Friendship Cake is more than simply baking; it's an expression of friendship and an endless cycle of love.

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Amish Friendship Cake (Brandied fruit starter)

This recipe, unlike the conventional bread yeast-type starter is based on a brandied fruit starter, which requires 30 days of preparation if you have the starter fruit juice, otherwise it requires another 30 days. This cake is made with a brandied fruit mixture of peaches, pineapple, fruit cocktail, cherries, and sugar, however the variations are limitless and you can use whichever fruit you want.

Fruit Mixture:

1-1/2 cups Starter Juice (see Initial Starter recipe at the end)
1 large can sliced peaches (with juice)
2-1/2 cups sugar