Free-time and Fairy-cakes

The wonder and beauty of blogging – is that it doesn’t necessarily have to operate in real time.  Take this afternoon’s posting, for instance.  Would you be shocked to learn that it was written a couple of weeks ago?  It’s good to know that I’m pretty consistent in my failings –  glamorous wife, calm mother, timely blog-poster...

Since writing the first posting, our lives have changed immensely.   We have now largely accepted – by necessity – that we have a baby in the house, and cannot any longer pass responsibility for her onto anyone else.   The baby-help is gone, and now it’s largely just me, struggling along, watching days unravel before my eyes, eating cold soup out of cartons (not the children, obviously, they eat like Kings / Queens), stepping over rolled-up nappies, discarded baby-grows, wet towels etc . 

I have also managed – several times in fact -  to make it out of the house with the two of them. On my own!  (The impetus for this wasn’t so much to exercise myself or the children, or breathe in some fresh  air (well, fresh-ish – this is south London after all) – rather to feel that I am getting some use out of that monstrously large double buggy I bought.  It’s now down to about £100 per use, which isn’t too bad...)

So there I was yesterday, out and about - after the usual hour-long preparation, running back and forwards from kitchen to pram to bedroom to pram back to kitchen (juice, snack, nappies, wipes, jumper – respectively) – bent over double like a deranged yogi, as I pushed the Boy on his scooter (“cootie”) with one hand and the Girl in the uncooperative pram with the other. Occasionally he would be ahead and she lagged behind, then she’d  get more of my attention and would surge in front of him;  momentarily they’d be equal and  manage to get the same amount of energy from me simultaneously.  Whatever their positions, I was always in the rear,  crippled, hot, flustered, looking ridiculous (but not caring) and counting down the hours till their bedtime, already deciding what bottle of wine I’d be opening.

That few minutes (which felt like hours) sums up my life at the moment – and probably for the next 20 years. The children will always take priority, oblivious that I’m behind them, sweating, struggling, worrying, supporting.  Dreaming of booze.  Wishing I hadn’t thought it a great idea to take the single pram / suggest the scooter / go for the walk / make whatever silly decision I made which got me into this position in the first place.

But for the moment they’re both asleep, the Man and I each had relatively good night sleeps last night, the washing machine is silent for once, and I feel something approaching contentment.  That’ll probably disappear shortly, but right now  all is well. 

So well in fact that I just made fairycakes!  The easiest recipe ever,  I do it from memory (which, given that I asked a delivery man, in all sincerity, what day it is today,  isn’t bad).

Fairy cakes.

You need: Eggs, Butter, Castor Sugar, self-raising flour, and some sort of flavouring – eg a citrus fruit, or some vanilla essence. (For quantities, read on.)

Heat your oven to about 180c (mine is a fan oven so 160 does it).

Prepare your muffin baking tin by either greasing it, or using baking cases (latter is much much easier).

Weigh the whole eggs.  Make a mental note of the weight. (Using two eggs will yield about 8 cakes, so depending on how many you want, work on that basis).   Break the eggs into a food processor.

Add equal amounts, weight-wise, of each of the other ingredients – bar the flavouring. 

Mix well, for a couple of minutes.  Once you have a yellowy sludge, add your flavouring. For mix based on two eggs, I add the zest and juice of one lemon, or one teaspoon of vanilla essence.   

Mix again, then spoon into the muffin cases.  You want to fill each case by about 2/3rds.

Stick into the hot oven and leave until they’ve risen well and are light brown – about 12 minutes (depending on your oven).

Wait until they’ve cooled down a bit before handing them to your whinging son (or else he’ll just whinge even more, and louder...)

For grown-ups, split open while warm and eat with raspberries and whipped cream.  or else just gobble up as they are, in the few precious minutes of you-time you have.