Herman the German

Some of you will already know that Herman is the German Friendship Cake that is currently doing the rounds.  Herman is a sourdough cake that gets given out in goo form (i.e. as a starter) and needs to be tended to for ten days mainly through a schedule of stirring well everyday and feeding with flour, sugar and milk every few days.  Then at the end of the ten days you divide him into four, pass three onto friends to care for and bake one quarter yourself.  It has recently reached my friends and we've all been feeding and baking Herman feverishly.  Looking after a growing, yeasty mass for ten days is a strange experience but a distinctly enjoyable one.  There is something comforting in the routine of coming home to stir Herman and as you know I'm all about feeling comforted.  The recipe that came with my Herman seems to be the standard one on the internet involving apples, raisins and spices such as cinnamon but I thought I would tweak it a little.  I assumed the apples were to keep the cake moist as well as for taste so swapped two apples for four pears which may have been one too many in hindsight but it was just a very pear-y cake and it did definitely stay moist.  I don't like dried fruit such as raisins and wasn't keen on buying a bag just to try and figure out what to do with the rest so I left those out as well.  A pear Herman sounded good but I was sure it could be improved so I decided to make it a chocolate and pear Herman and leave out the cinnamon as it's difficult to balance cinnamon with chocolate I find. This was also a cunning ploy on my part as if the pear didn't quite work or the cake was too dry I would be forgiven as I had provided chocolate cake and everybody likes chocolate cake.  To give my cake a chocolate flavour I used 1 3/4 cups of flour instead of the suggested two and used 1/4 cup of cocoa.  The recipe also said it should cook in 45 minutes but I found mine wasn't ready until it had been in for 1 1/4 hours.  
My tinkering with Herman went down very well and he didn't even last twenty four hours in my office.  

I don't own a cake stand so my classy version is an upturned saucepan.