I Killed Herman

The very lovely Carole from Carole Finds her Wings and best friend of my daughter Liberty, passed onto me an intriguing pot of something. A quick read of the A4 printed sheet that accompanied it revealed that it was in fact a German Friendship Cake, aka Herman. Herman introduced himself as a sour dough cake  and the instructions detailed a care plan for the next ten days.

It all looked fairly straight forward. Most days only required for Herman to be mixed and then there were some special steps for adding extra ingredients. On day 9, the idea is to divide the mixture into 4 equal portions, keep one to cook the following day and pass the remaining three portions onto 3 friends in intriguing pots for them to restart the process.

I am not generally a fan of 'chain' concepts. I delete chain texts and emails at the risk of the evil clown appearing at midnight or back luck befalling me forevermore. But a 'chain' cake in the name of friendship seemed like something I could get on board with. Let's be honest, anything that involves cake is going to have me interested!

As per the instructions, I transferred my Herman into a bowl, covered loosely with a tea towel and left it at room temperature. It was fascinating watching it bubble and expand in the bowl. My problem was that daughter Liberty, who was also the proud owner of her very own Herman, was in the middle of moving house. She entrusted me with hers until she was settled in and in a position to take it off my hands.

This never happened. I was stuck being mum to one and foster mum to the other.

I lovingly cared for Hermann 1 and Herman 2, who if I'm honest were starting to stink the kitchen out a bit.

I got to day 5 and then I went away for two nights at a hotel and spa with my husband to celebrate our two year wedding anniversary.

Liberty assured me that she came round every day to give the Hermans a stir but they were bubbling somewhat out of control and trying to escape the confines of their bowls when I next lifted their tea towel to check on them.

Evidence on my tea towel of the Hermans' escape bid

I'm not quite sure what happened next. Maybe still floating in my bubble of relaxation and romance that I had created for myself during my break, I simply neglected the other men in my life, the Hermans.

It was daughter Charis that finally sprang into action and demanded to know what was going on with the friendship cakes.

We traced back through the instructions to work out what we had failed to do and what we should be doing. I had well and truly lost the Herman plot.

We made the executive decision to to just use what we had to cook up a giant cake and celebrate the idea of friendship by sharing it around.

We had to improvise with some of the ingredients that we should have added but amazingly, entirely thanks to Charis, we ended up with something that sort of worked.

Liberty came round  to partake of our efforts.

The title of my post is perhaps not accurate. I didn't kill Herman. I neglected the Hermans and Charis came to the rescue. I did, however, kill the downward friendship chain. I hope I have made amends in some small way by making a toast to the good people who would have been the recipients, over a cup of coffee and a big chunk of Herman.