I baked a dozen cupcakes to take along to my younger son’s school today for his birthday on Saturday. I’m afraid I’m one of those awful parents who insists on bringing cupcakes to school! I wonder if the fact that they’re lovingly homemade, with wholegrain flour and the best ingredients (and no nuts), makes a difference. No matter. He wanted cupcakes for his mates and I obliged.

The ones you see here are just the rehearsal lot (later eaten by his classmates). There are more I’ll frost for his party tomorrow.

Anyway, as I had swirled the frosting too high on the cupcakes, I couldn’t use my 24-cupcake carrier as it was, but had to remove the second storey to allow headroom for the little gateaux. With those 12, and another dozen in a separate container, I piled the kids into the car and set off.

En route to school, but still yards from our house, I bump into my lovely friend Mary Beth, who is walking her daughter to the bus stop. I pull over to chat, show her my cargo, and tempt fate by remarking that it’s a good thing I don’t have a dog.

A bit insensitive of me really, for her recently acquired dog had eaten all the cupcakes she had baked and decorated for her daughter the night preceding her party just two weeks ago.

I don’t know how she coped. I would have needed therapy after that episode.

As I set off again, I turn the corner a few yards ahead, and lo and behold, I had forgotten to strap the cupcake carriers with the seat belt and one carrier, holding a dozen, slips to the car’s floor! All the blue icing ended up in a tangled embrace, mocking me with their glossiness and glimpses of the sprinkles that so recently neatly adorned their crowns.

I couldn’t react with the horror and recriminations my instincts urged me to respond with, as child #2, whom my husband and I refer to as the Drama Child and can be given to extended bouts of hysteria if his tranquility is disturbed, was waiting for my cue on how to react. Instead I said, “Don’t worry, half of them are ok! I’ll drop you off at school and re-do the the other half with my spares.”

Both the kids had been very worried initially, but settled back with a bit more confidence.

Bbbbut, I lied. I didn’t have any spares!

Time, and sanity, were saved by a few fortunate facts.

1) The cupcakes fell over within the container, and once I upended them, the messed-up frosting was easily and hygienically removed with a palette knife

2) Disguise of errors was possible. I set them on a biscuit cooling rack, dusted them with icing sugar to mask any evidence of the previous icing, and started anew

3) I had unwittingly made inordinate amounts of frosting the day before and had plenty left over!

The recovery took about 40 minutes. What luck!

And this is how they looked afterwards.

I’ve mentioned several times I am a klutz, and if it weren’t for the momentum of the car’s movement knocking over the cupcakes, it very realistically would have been me.

But tomorrow is a new day and new cupcakes will be born, commemorating the special day eight years ago that my beautiful son came into the world in sultry Singapore!