Herman Cake Recipe

Herman is a friendship or a sour dough cake. Sarah kindly gave us some (italics are because he kind of takes over your cake baking as you need to use him regularly plus I feel it is a bit of  a swindle the recipes have baking soda in despite the starter being yeast... surely that should be what is rising the cake... what is the POINT of the starter???)
There are many many recipes out there but we made the apple one. I think Herman might be American as most the recipes seem to use cups for the measures. I adjusted recipe a little as original was too sweet.

3/4 cups of Sugar (brown or white)
3/4 cup Oil (or melted butter or a mix)
1 tsp Vanilla
2 cup Plain flour
2 tsp Cinnamon
2 Eggs
1 cup Herman Starter (there are various recipes for starting one if you search)
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt
1 Apple peeled and cut in to small pieces
1 cups Sultanas

Put oven on 190C to heat
Bung everything except the apple and sultanas in to a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the apple and sultanas and mix a bit more.
Butter a cake tin (approx 9x13 inches)
Put the mix in the tin.
Bake for approx 50 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

Herman starter and apple

The cake mix (without fruit)

So keen to scoff we didn't get a picture till after the first slice...

Doug's bread

C'est super n'est pas?

We made beer last week and kept some of the yeast from the bottom of the barrel. We made bread there and then with some of it and fed the rest with flour and water so keep it alive.

Doug made his first loaf of bread with it - it came out awesome!!

The yeast

Ingredients 

500g strong white flour

Warm water

Yeast (about 1/4-1/2 cup of starter depending how fast you want it to rise or 7g dried yeast

1 tsp salt

Instructions

Put flour and salt in a bowl

Add the yeast

Add sufficient water to make a sticky dough

Leave for about an hour

Knead until dough is smooth and springy sprinkling on flour as necessary to stop sticking

Shape the dough by tucking the sides underneath to create ball shape of if using a tin a shape similar to the tin

Place on backing tray or in tin and cover with oiled clingfilm

Cooking

When the dough has risen to twice it's original size back in a hot oven for about 30 mins or until well browned. Turn the oven down a bit if it seems to be browning too fast.

Leave to cool a bit before cutting and eating