Cake and neighbourlyness

A couple of months ago my mother burdened me with a sourdough cake starter. The starter and instructions for its nuture and ultimate baking had been doing the rounds of her workplace. Most people had dutifully tended their starter for 10 days, divided it into 4, baked one, and distributed the rest. They all took their completed cakes in to taste test the different versions. All sounds very lovely and communal.

But it appears my mum ran out of people to distribute starters to, so when my brother-in-law came to visit he brought with him the gift of 'Hermann the German Sourdough cake'. No explanation, no phonecall to see if I wanted to have a go. Just...there it was.

So, I cursed a little (who wants to wait 10 days for cake?) and then figured I'd have a try at the thing. The tending was easy - just feed it with flour and sugar every few days. It appeared to be realtively indestructable - an extra day here and there did it no harm at all.

But then I got to the point of dividing it up. I know no-one who might want to tend a cake for 10 days. Even if it is super easy. So I began "Operation bake LOTS of cake". I baked all 4. One went to my office, one went to Dan's. The final two were sliced up and half frozen, half eaten.

The beauty of this cake is that you can throw in pretty much any flavourings you fancy, so I emptied the contents of the dried fuit tub, the fruit from the fridge, and also made a carrot cake version. Also, it does freeze well. And it is rather tasty. (I shouldn't be being so grotty about it really - My only complaint is the wait-time.)

Even with lots of cake in the freezer there was far too much cake in our house for 2 people to get through before it went stale, so I took some over the road to our old neighbour. He's a funny chap - I've given him cake when we've had too much once or twice before, and he's always amazingly grateful. I guess its not the kind of thing he would make for himself.

Two days later Bob stopped me on the road and told me he'd never eaten anything like my cake and that he'd pay me to make him another. I felt guilty I'd jettisoned the project and had no more sourdough starter.

Well, I put it out of my mind - afterall I couldn't make him another. I didn't have a starter to do so, and I couldn't 100% remember what I'd put in his (dried apricots and bananas, with some fresh blueberries I think, maybe some vanilla or cinnamon.) But then last weekend Bob came round with a gift of runner beans and tomatoes from his garden, and apples from someone's orchard (probably stolen!). Well it seemed churlish not to respond, so I took some sourdough cake slices out of the freezer and dropped them round.

On tuesday I came home to find more runner beans and a pot of plum jam on the doorstep, along with a note:



After I stopped chuckling I dutifully dropped round more cake from the freezer.

But those were the last slices....so what happens now? I wonder if he can be mollified by a different kind of cake?!