I was reading this on The Guardian's online pages & thought that what a perfect little gift this starter would make. You could tuck a small pot of it into peoples stockings along with a copy of the cake recipes & the instructions for keeping 'Herman' alive.  It would be great fun for children too (holidays being a time that we need to think up activities for them). The recipes are in the 2nd link.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth.....led-herman

http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/food-feeding-55.....-cake.html

I can remember eating these cakes when I was working in various theatre costume workshops in the US. People would bring in various goodies, cakes, salads etc to share. They frequently bought in pots of the starter for their workmates.