A local bakery owner has written a cookbook evoking memories of her childhood in Ohio.
“Amish Baking at Home,” just released by Fox Chapel Publishing, is the first book by Naomi Stutzman Gingerich, co-owner of Louie & Honey’s Kitchen.
Gingerich and her daughter Natalie Gingerich started pop-up bakery Lavender and Honey in 2017 and opened their retail location at 407 West End Blvd. in 2020, eventually changing the name to Louie & Honey’s Kitchen.
Naomi Gingerich grew up in the Amish/Mennonite community of Holmes County, Ohio, and the kitchen lessons she learned there from an early age inform much of the baking at Louie & Honey’s Kitchen – not the least of which is the bakery’s popular cinnamon rolls.
Gingerich said she was not planning to write a cookbook – until someone from Fox Chapel, which is based near the Amish country of Lancaster, Pa., reached out to her, after reading some her social-media posts. “I love to write. I’m a storyteller at heart. But I never thought I would write a cookbook,” Gingerich said.
Part of the appeal of doing the book, she said, was the opportunity to include stories of the Amish/Mennonite community in general and her family in particular. “It’s like opening a door to my childhood,” Gingerich said.
As far as the recipes are concerned, Fox Chapel wanted a sort of general Amish baking book, she said, so “Amish Baking at Home” is just that. It covers most of the classic Amish recipes, but it is not a Louie & Honey’s cookbook – though Louie & Honey’s customers certainly will recognize some of the sweets.
For instance, there are two recipes for cinnamon rolls in the book, though they are not made exactly the same way that the bakery makes them. “But they are very similar,” Gingerich said. “Most people probably couldn’t tell the difference.”
Gingerich said the book has 176 recipes in its seven chapters. Each begins with step-by-step photographs and instructions on a technique, such as how to make a pie crust, assemble a layer cake or make caramel sauce.
Some of the recipes are reprinted from Fox Chapel’s earlier “Amish Community Cookbook” or the well-known 1950 “Mennonite Community Cookbook.” But many come from Gingerich’s own family and friends. “A lot of these were hand-written recipes that my mom had, that my aunts had, that were passed down from generations,” Gingerich said.
There’s the honey wheat bread that Gingerich’s mother started baking when she got married in 1940. There are the apple dumpling rollups that were her father’s favorite dessert, unusually sliced and baked in their own brown-sugar sauce.
There’s Aunt Edna’s whipped-cream cake layered with fresh strawberries.
There’s her mother’s “crave-worthy” custard pie that Gingerich enjoyed weekly – often out on the porch swing – as a child in Ohio.
Some of the many other recipes include shoo-fly and rhubarb-crumb pies, peanut-butter banana cake and what Gingerich call’s Amish Neighbor cake – an oatmeal cake with coconut pecan glaze that evokes memories of her mother and childhood.
Other desserts include silky chocolate Oreo pudding and cherry delight (a cold cherry pie with a whipped-cream and cream-cheese layer).
There are recipes for whoopie pies and lemon curd squares, pumpkin dinner rolls and crushed wheat bread.
There’s even a chapter on such breakfast fare as blueberry streusel coffee cake, raspberry scones, raised donuts and oatmeal flapjacks.
The book winds up with recipes for frostings, sauces and compotes.
“Amish Baking at Home” is available online – through Fox Chapel and such sites as Amazon, at bookstores and at the bakery. A limited-edition deluxe hard cover ($40) has a different cover photo and gold ribbon, and it comes signed and numbered in a gift box – with a coupon for cinnamon rolls. The regular edition ($25) is spiral-bound hard cover for ease of use in the kitchen.
Gingerich said her earliest food memory is of her mother letting her stir the pudding on stove, and for a long time she dreamed of being able to make pies as good as her mother’s.
Writing the book has allowed her relive many of her childhood food memories.
“I think it’s an honor for me to do this because it’s really a tribute to my mother. She taught me everything I know,” Gingerich said.
“She was never able to travel here to see the bakery – she passed away in 2014. So maybe she’s watching from somewhere above and feeling proud that I’m carrying on that tradition of baking.”
mhastings@wsjournal.com
336-727-7394
@mhastingswsj
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