I wish that was a metaphor. It isn’t.

A friend of mine gave me a Herman recently; Herman is a German Friendship Cake, kind of like the culinary equivalent of a chain letter. A chain cake, if you will. Thus:

So, a cake that takes ten days to make, has a personality and comes with a threat. What’s not to like?

You can probably guess I was always one of those people who felt pressured by chain letters. Now I’m all grown up and everything…. no, I still feel pressured. So I made Herman. It took TEN FREAKING DAYS.

The kitchen smelled like a brewery {who knew that milk, sugar and flour left on the side would become beer?} and every morning I was greeted with what looked like frog spawn bubbling up in the bowl. Nice.

Fortunately the aforementioned friend also gave me a piece of a Herman she made earlier, so I knew it would potentially be worth it. Even when I’d added all the bajillion extra ingredients and it looked like someone just threw up in the bowl.

See all that yellow and white? Shitloads of melted butter and brown sugar. Very wrong but totally worth it for crunch later on.

I am happy to report that the ten day torment WAS worth it, even though I cheated and didn’t give away three portions of pre-baked Herman to friends as instructed. Obviously I will go to hell now. I actually forgot that you’re not supposed to put a lid on Herman, and the three tubs exploded in the night. Oops.

And godDAMNit!

But look at this appley, walnutty, raisiny, cinnamony goodness. Obviously as I’m a Nartist and not a food photographer or chef, all you get is photos of hacked-into-cake {above} and broken-when-I-took-it-out-cake {below}. And blurry at that. Don’t say I don’t spoil you.

So yeah. It tastes excellent but in my opinion NO cake is worth ten days of my life. Well not twice anyway.

Should you ever feel the overwhelming urge to make a Herman, RUN AWAY! ARE YOU CRAZY?!! No, what I was actually going to say was, you don’t need cooking apples; I just used a couple of random eating apples and it came out fine.

Oh and I just Googled Herman in case you DO want to be insane, and he not only has his own website, he also has a FORUM. I am running away now. Into my studio to do painting and things that make sense to me.

I’ll just take some cake with me.