Herman the German Friendship Cake: The Bake Off
My 10 days are up and my time with Herman the German Friendship Cake is drawing to a close. Both myself and The Boy have become quite close to him and enjoyed watching him grow and develop. But we cannot run from our destiny forever. Yesterday was the last time Herman needed feeding, and as he reached his most bloated proportion, I sectioned him up into four mini-Herman’s – three to give away to deserving friends to restart the cycle of life anew. Sunrise, sunset.
And so the time has come to make my remaining portion of bubbly goo into all that he can be. There are lots of lovely recipe ideas on the Herman website, but I decided to adapt the normal recipe slightly, according to what I had in the cupboard.
Lo-Lo’s Fruity Herman the German Recipe
200g mixed dried fruit
100g pitted sour cherries
Splash of Muscat or other dessert wine
100ml apple puree
1 portion of Herman
175g sugar
300g flour
pinch of salt
130 ml vegetable oil (I didn’t quite have enough so I added a bit of butter and milk)
2 eggs
Vanilla extract
Cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
Put your oven on to heat at 180’C. Put all the other ingredients, bar the apple puree into your bowl with Herman, and mix them all together (tricky recipe this one)
I am so happy I have seen this tonight, I wanted to do something special for my half-German mother-in-law at Christmas and this is a lovely idea, thank you x
Yes, definitely – these are basically sour dough starters – you could make a savoury starter and keep it to rise all your bread for the rest of your life!
I made 2 of these earlier on in the year one with lots of fruit and one with crunchie and chocolate drops needless to say the chocolate version went fastest hehe. I am wondering if you could use the herman mix to make bread ??
I used to love a German Coffee shop that used to be in Liverpool's Albert Dock many years ago, their pastries were fab!