Author: Sarah Miles

Aaaah….Pimm’s!  The epitome of the British summer, Wimbledon and…hang on a minute!  That’s not Pimm’s, it’s RAIN!!

Anyway, the unusual flash of sunshine this morning inspired me to share this recipe with you.  It is adapted from the Love Bakery cookbook and is a mixture of a cupcake and a cocktail – a cuptail!  Inspired!  I have tried these out on friends, family and the school secretaries and got a resounding ‘Hurrah’ and ‘Please can I have the recipe?’  So here it is….

Ingredients:

Cakes

125 soft unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
2tbsp Pimm’s no.1
2 eggs
125g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
3tbsp semi-skimmed milk

Icing

125g soft unsalted butter
1tbsp Pimm’s no.1
2 drops lemon juice
150g sifted icing sugar
1dsp semi-skimmed milk

Filling

4 strawberries plus extra for decoration
2 slices of orange with peel removed
2 slices cucumber
About 4 mint leaves (+ 10 for decoration)

 How to make:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC (160 fan) and line a muffin tin with 10 muffin cases (use red ones if you have them).  In a mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and Pimm’s for about 7 mins or until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, one by one, and mix for a further 2 mins.  Combine the flour and baking powder then add to the mix with the milk and blend for one more minute.  Dollop an ice-cream scoopful of mixture into each case and bake for 17 minutes in the centre of the oven.  I turn them once and put a small bowl of water at the bottom to keep them moist, but that’s up to you!  Cool on a wire rack when cooked.

For the filling you need to pulse all the ingredients in a blender until chunky/mushy.  Don’t go overboard else you’ll just have puree.  Use an apple-corer to remove the centre of each cake then fill the hole with the mixture.  Pop the sponge core back on top like a lid.

To make the icing, you need to cream together the butter, lemon and Pimm’s for 2 minutes until fluffy.  Add the icing sugar and milk and mix together for another 2 mins. Pipe the icing in a swirl on top of the cakes and decorate with strawberries and a mint leaf.

Arrange them on a nice white/silver plate and whisk them off to impress your friends and make them love you forever.

Yum

A while ago I was given a Herman friendship cake.  I had never heard of this phenomenon before (much to the surprise of my erstwhile friend) and she explained to me that Herman was a German ‘living’ cake that you nurture and then share/pass to/inflict upon some other friends whilst you bake up a bit of yours into a nice cake for tea.

I duly followed the instructions and rather enjoyed the smell of yeast that filled the kitchen and the bubbling ectoplasm they lay beneath the tea towel…(do try not to get it ON the tea towel cos it’s a bugger to get off).  Come the end of my 10 days I looked at the mixture and could think of not one soul in the vicinity who I could pass the ‘honour’ on to.  So I donated Herman to the bin.  Forgetting to save the bit that I was supposed to bake.

Since then, Herman has come back to haunt me….people have actually exclaimed ‘You killed Herman?’.  Erm…yes.  If throwing some gloop in the bin constitutes the murder of some cake mix then, yes.  I killed Herman.

To make up for this, and perhaps because I’m bored, I feel the need to resurrect Herman the German and at the very least bake him up and scoff him.  It is his destiny to be eaten and passed on and not to line my wheelie bin.  Fear not, I am not resurrecting him as such…more reincarnating him….from some ingredients in my cupboard.

Herman Cake Recipe

To make a Herman cake from scratch you will need to dissolve one packet of active dry yeast (or 2¼tsp) in half a pint of warm water for 10 mins then stir.  In a large bowl carefully mix together with 140g plain flour and 225g caster sugar.  Gently stir in 50ml of warm milk and cover the bowl with a clean tea towel.  Leave in a cool place (but NOT the fridge else you’ll kill him) for 24hrs.

Then start from day 1 of the official Herman Instructions below (these are what you give to your friends with a portion of Herman and a wry smile). Then run before they ask questions.

Official Herman Cake Instructions

 

Hello, my name is Herman.

I am a sourdough cake. I’m supposed to sit on your worktop for 10 days without a lid on.

You CANNOT put me in the fridge or I will die.  If I stop bubbling, I am dead.

Day1: Put me in a large mixing bowl and cover loosely with a tea towel.


Day 2: Stir well


Day 3: Stir well


Day 4: Herman is hungry. Add 1 cup each of plain flour, sugar and milk. Stir well.


Day 5: Stir well


Day 6: Stir well


Day 7: Stir well


Day 8: Stir well


Day 9: Add the same as day 4 and stir well. Divide into 4 equal portions and give away to friends with a copy of these instructions. Keep the fourth portion.


Day 10: Now you are ready to make the cake. Stir well and add the following:

225g sugar 

225g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

160ml vegetable oil

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 cooking apples peeled, cored & cut into chunks

200g raisins

100g walnuts/almonds (optional)

2 heaped tsp cinnamon

2 heaped tsp baking powder

 

Mix everything together and put into a large greased baking tin.

Sprinkle with 50g brown sugar and 50ml melted butter. Bake for 45 minutes at 180°C.

Then cover in foil and bake for a further 25 minutes to make sure Herman is cooked in the middle.  

Cut up when cold.  The cake freezes well if you’re keen….

Serve as is or with ice cream!

UPDATE

I have successfully completed my Herman cycle and made the cake (minus the raisins).  I had to cook it for longer than expected and have altered the recipe accordingly.  It wasn’t very cakey – more of a pudding and had I any ice-cream to go with it (I love Haagen-Dazs vanilla) it would have been even better.  As it was, it was nice tasting but not, perhaps, something I’d rush to do again….

It was fun doing it though and over on For Bella and Will there are some great alternate recipes!