Herman The German Friendship Cake

[Fat Bob]

I had never heard of this sordough cake where the starter is passed on like a chain letter. According to Radio 4 today it started in an Amish comminity and has gone global.

It seems that in some areas of UK it has hit saturation point and people are deliberately killing the starter.

It all sounds quite harmless and apparently kids like following the instruction and anything that encourages home baking must be a good idea.

There is a quite a lot of info on the net about this cake- here is one link.

www.hermanthegermanfriendshipcake.com/

It might be fun to do the same with a sourdough bread - who will set the ball rolling?

[faz]

Our son brought home a 'Herman' and it had to be fed avery couple of days with something or other. After 10 or 14 days it had to be split up and passed on to other kids, with some of it being turned in to a cake. Personally, I couldn't imagine anything less hygienic than something that had required countless 10 year old children to mess about with it every day or so, but maybe I am just fussy!

[turkey]

this sounds like a very good idea, but I can see the risk of all the kids "feeding" Herman god knows what, never heard of a sour dough cake at all, are these common elsewhere in the world?