Eight Acres

Since I first recieved my sourdough cake starter "Herman" , I have been enjoying experimenting with using it to make cakes, pancakes and biscuits (cookies).  I can adapt just about any recipe to Herman, and he adds a slight sour tang and creates a light fluffy batter.  Here's what I do to adapt a recipe, just use all the same quantities, but combine them in a different order: Melt the butter in a pot over a low heat.  Stir in the flour, rapadura (sugar), and flavours (cocoa, ginger, spices), and add a slurp of Herman and any other liquids, put on the lid and leave the mixture at room temperature for a few hours (you can start this in the morning and bake in the afternoon, or even put it all in the fridge after a few hours and bake it later the next day, just depends on the outside temperature, in winter you could probably leave it out overnight). When you're ready to bake, add the egg and a good heaped tablespoon of baking soda (leave out the baking powder).  T...

My friend gave me a bowl of sourdough cake starter, called "Herman".  A bit of a google revealed that this cake starter has been around for a long time, maybe not this particular starter mixture in my kitchen, but the idea of this cake starter has been circulating since the 1980s or earlier.  There's actually an entire website devoted to it, as well as lots of newspaper articles and forum discussions.  Have you heard of it before now?  Herman when he arrived - pictured with my Danish bread dough whisk, which was a very cool xmas pressie from a friend, and I've been using it at every opportunity In its current incarnation, the mix is given away with instructions on how to look after it for 10 days.  It needs to be "fed" with flour, sugar and water on day 4 and 10, and stirred on each of the other days.  On the 10th day the started is split into four portions, three to give away and one used to make a cake.  The recipe that comes with Herman is for a...

Even though we don't eat much sugar, chocolate cake is still an occasional treat.  The thing I hate about baking is cleaning up, so this "one pot" cake is my favourite recipe!  If I could take the handle off the pot and put the entire thing in the oven I would.... Rather than "creaming" the butter and sugar, in this recipe you dissolve the sugar, cocoa powder and butter in milk by heating it in a pot.  I then stir in the 2 eggs and the flour and scoop the batter into a cake tin.  The only thing to remember is to let the mixture cool enough before adding the eggs, so that they don't cook :) Heat in a pot until combined (keep heat as low as possible, otherwise you have to wait for ages for it to all cool down, the butter will melt just above body temperature, so it doesn't need much heat): 1 cup milk 1 1/4 cups sugar (I use whatever I have, this time brown sugar, when that's used up I'm on to the rapadura) 125g butter 1/2 cup coc...