10 Baking Tips Straight Out of Amish Country

If you're a fan of Amish sugar cookies, you'll love these baking tips, passed down from generation to generation.

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Professional female baker cooking dough with eggs, butter and milk for Christmas cookies.
Shutterstock / Stasique

When it comes to scratch-made foods, it doesn’t get much more authentic than the Amish kitchen. Characterized by communities that eschew materialism and avoid modern conveniences and technology, many Amish bake bread in wood-burning stoves, preserve pies in iceboxes and beat their eggs without the aid of electricity. While you may not want to adopt the complete Amish lifestyle (taking a buggy to the grocery store could be a tad inconvenient), you can still take some tips from their time-tested vault of secrets. Here are 10 takeaways for any clever baker. Have you tried Amish Yummasetti noodle casserole yet?

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Taste of Home

Use Vinegar in Cherry Desserts

From homemade salad dressings to unorthodox pie fillings, vinegar lends a pleasant bite to all kinds of foods. According to The Amish Cook columnist Elizabeth Coblentz, the acidity plays up the tart taste in cherries, so she made vinegar a staple in her cherry baked goods. This old-fashioned cherry torte is a great example of this flavor combo.

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Crisp sugar cookies
Taste of Home

Keep Your Cookies Fresh

Without refrigerators, the Amish have to be careful when storing food. They’ve learned, for example, that cookies stay fresh longer when stored in an airtight container with a little piece of bread (it’s also a great tip to soften up cookies that have gotten too crunchy). And it doesn’t have to come from a loaf of Amish potato bread; plain sandwich bread will do the trick.

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Australian oatmeal cookies close-up on a baking sheet on the table.
Shutterstock / AS Food studio

Always Make More than You Think You’ll Need

Amish community dinners have to feed as many as 600 people, so people are accustomed to making food in large quantities. But even when they’re just cooking for immediate family, Amish bakers typically double the recipe. Pies or cakes are such delicious delicacies that they get eaten quickly—and, like many, the Amish enjoy snacking on cookies after church service on Sundays—so they make extra batches to eat throughout the week. Check out these traditional Amish recipes that you’ll definitely want to try.

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Homemade Banana Bread or Cake in a stainless tray fresh from the oven.
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Brush the Top of Your Bread with Butter

Making Amish friendship bread, a treat synonymous with Amish baking, can be tedious. Noted for its incredibly moist texture, it takes an entire week to make, with specific instructions detailed for each day. This bread is a classic example of an Amish Christmas dish. If you can’t imagine devoting this kind of time to bread, there’s a trick to giving other homemade breads an Amish flavor: Brush melted butter across the top before baking. This will make the bread softer and give it a golden appearance and crispy crunch. By the way, here’s what makes Amish butter so special.

Terrified to make bread at home? These non-scary bread recipes are easy enough for anyone to bake!

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Taste of Home

Break up the Brown Sugar

While rock-solid brown sugar might seem inevitable, the Amish found an easy way to make it soft again. Place a small piece of bread or apple in the bag with the sugar and leave it alone for a little while. When you come back, the sugar will be soft again. Here are some of our favorite homemade bread recipes.

(Learn more tricks for how to soften brown sugar!)

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hot peppers
Shutterstock / RussieseO

Add a Little Spice

While you might like to add a dash of cinnamon to bread or a sprinkle of cocoa to cookies, the Amish are known to use hot peppers to add spice to their foods. Adding a bit of hot pepper can make any boring dish exciting. A common example is hot pepper butter, which adds a thrill to even the most basic bread loaves. By the way, these are the types of peppers you need to know, from sweet to spicy.

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Pay Attention to Color

When preparing your food, don’t live and die by the recommended cooking time. Instead, closely monitor the color of soups, casseroles and baked goods to tell when they’re done. Crisp edges or a boiling surface can indicate when food is ready. The Amish know to remove things from the heat when they reach the appropriate color or texture, and this leads to more satisfying results than simply setting a timer and walking away. For more old-fashioned cooking know-how, see timeless tips we learned from Grandma.

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Garlic-Basil Butter on Bread
Taste of Home

Never Serve Plain Butter

The Amish don’t often indulge, but they rarely serve butter plain when there are so many varieties to enjoy. Common types include apple, grape, red pepper and various herb butters. Take a page from the Amish book and add flair to your dinner table by trying these scrumptious flavored butter recipes.

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Person in a grocery store pushing a cart while reading their list
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When It Comes to Celebrations, Start Early

The Amish start meal planning for large occasions weeks in advance. They make plans for shopping, and they prep ingredients and dishes that freeze well, such as casseroles, broths and simple cookies. And they begin gathering gifts, putting decorations together and doing other small tasks as early as possible.

Eliminate holiday stress by making a shopping list, making sure you have the necessary recipes on hand and getting ready to bake before it’s actually time to begin. Inspired to plan in advance? Start now with our easy meal prep steps.

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Cakes and cookies recipes in a recipe box
Shutterstock / Karin Hildebrand Lau

Save Every Great Recipe

Amish or not, passing down recipes from one generation to the next is a tradition that holds people together. Whenever you make something that your family loves—whether it is an original recipe or adaptation of someone else’s—be sure to copy the ingredients and steps, and save them somewhere safe.

When your children grow up and start their own families, there is nothing more special than passing down treasured family recipes. Begin teaching them how to prepare the dishes when they’re little. Cooking with your kids is a great way to bring the family together.

Now that you know the secrets to baking like an Amish cook, try your hand at their famous Amish sugar cookies or apple goodie. It’s one of the most popular desserts on our website, and it’s no surprise why: The time-tested, melt-in-your-mouth taste is simply unparalleled.

Emma B. Kumer
Emma interned for Taste of Home in 2017 and then continued freelancing there during college. Post college, she worked with Reader’s Digest as a digital visual assistant full time before becoming a motion designer at The Washington Post. There, she continues honing her craft of digital storytelling on social media platforms. She’s also been a tutorial writer for Adobe and a freelance music video animator. Outside of work, Emma loves running marathons, attending concerts and creative writing.