It seems that in the wee small hours of Sunday morning, some chavvy little hooligans have gone up our street vandalizing every car they went past. I looked out onto the street and was met by Car Carnage – wing mirrors hanging off, obscenities keyed into the paintwork, smear marks where they have obviously tried to get in… luckily there were no smashed windows or worse. And very luckily for me, I had been unable to get a space on Friday night when I parked, so was at the very bottom of the street before they had really got going on their little smashing spree. The worst my little car suffered seems to be smear marks on the tops of the windows where they’ve tried to pry them down, scuffed plastic on the backs of the wing mirrors and what looks suspiciously like blood splattered up the nearside window. (I’ve actually managed to do worse this morning by reversing into a metal pole when I got to work… Luckily, depending on how you look at these things, the car was already scuffed on that bumper.)

So that was all a bit of a shock, I’m not used to dealing with police officers!! By this point I had completely forgotten about the impending oven delivery – so 5 minutes later when the door knocked again I was panicking that they had found some kind of damage on my car that I had missed when I checked it, but no! It was the lovely men from Currys with my shiny oven! And aaah, I love it! I’d love it even more if I’d been able to get an electric fan oven, but apparently they don’t make them small enough to fit in the weeny little space we have available. Never mind – it’s shiny and new and clean and I love it! And the ancient and rather dangerous looking maze of pipes behind the oven has been replaced with new ones, which is one less thing to worry about.

So, on to the baking! I have never baked cakes before without parental supervision. I have once baked scones, and whilst they were delicious on top, they were burnt on the bottom. With all that said, you would think that perhaps, following the recipe To The Letter would be a good idea. Well, I mentioned the other day that I planned to freestyle a little bit, but I bottled it in the end and decided to actually follow a recipe. The only problem was, I didn’t have any baking powder. But I figured what the hell, it’s self raising flour, it’ll probably be ok. Maybe put a little more in the cupcake cases to make up for it – how about 12 cases instead of the 18 suggested? That looks good! Ooh it’s all going to plan, all ready to rise and turn golden brown!

So I pop them in the oven…

Set the timer to 15 minutes…

Whip up some butter-icing to slap on the top…

Pop all the dirtys into the dishwasher…

Whiz around the surfaces with a wipe…

and before I know it, Beep Beep Beep Beep! They’re Ready!

Oh. Poo. It’s a good job I was on a sugar high from licking the bowls otherwise I may have had a nervous breakdown in the middle of the kitchen. Instead, I laughed and laughed and consoled myself with the fact that the sponge was at least light, fluffy, and delicious, and can be turned into a trifle.

Once I got over the trauma of such an epic fail, I decided I might as well give it another go, otherwise what the hell was I going to do with a pound of butter-icing?

So, here’s Take Two. 18 cases instead of 12. You’ll notice some are missing though – I forgot to take a picture before we started stuffing ourselves!

Terribly inelegant, as by the time I put the icing on I had had enough, but awfully good with a nice fresh cappucino.

Mmmm, got there in the end.