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Tuesday, September 17, 2013

It's surprising how much a bad case of croup can be improved by a home-made cupcake...


His nose might be running straight past his mouth and onto his tray table, but he's looking a lot more perky.

In the end, we decided not to take Toby to our GP, but chose instead to take advantage of the best out-of-hours care the NHS has to offer, by getting him examined by a senior A&E nurse. She wasn't at work at the time, she was on her way to the launderette. But we bumped into her as we walked down to Lidl, and I spotted an opportunity for some free medical advice. So I hastily described Toby's symptoms to her in the street, and tried to get him to bark for a sprat, after which she advised me to pop him into the nearest sauna and steam him gently until he's cooked.

The outcome was that we forced him to take a bath with Amelie on Sunday evening, which is usually enough to bring anyone to boiling point, and when he finally emerged from the steam room, he seemed a lot better. He slept well on Sunday night, and by yesterday had lost all oral similarities to sea mammals. Although he still looks a bit like a manatee.

To be honest though, I don't think it was entirely the steam therapy which cured him. I think it was his sister's medicinal cakes. It's a well known fact that Amelie has a long and distinguished career as a pastry chef and master baker, having started out in cake-decorating almost three years ago, before progressing on to advanced baking skills in the summer of 2012. So in an effort to treat her brother's ailments, Amelie took to the kitchen on Sunday afternoon and knocked out a few cupcakes...



I've turned up the volume to maximum, but I still can't work out what she's saying to herself. I expect she's reciting the recipe. Or praying to Mary Berry. You can, however, hear Toby coughing in the next room after 48 seconds, in the hope of winning the sympathy vote and getting an extra cake.

The good news is that despite leaving half the mixture dribbled across the kitchen work surface, Amelie managed to get enough of it into the muffin cases to produce twelve perfect cupcakes. She and I then pushed Toby down to Lidl in search of decorations. The free medical advice was just the icing on the cake.

We returned an hour later with icing sugar, food colouring, butter and figs, which proves that we always buy one thing we didn't intend to. Amelie then decorated the cakes in her own unique style, before stuffing her face at the table...


She looks a bit like Adam Lanza there, which is worrying.

We were already three cupcakes down at that point, with the fourth and fifth soon falling prey to an uninvited guest...


Lisa's rocking the no-makeup look there. Which is ironic as Amelie's wearing lip gloss. My wife's definitely got the 'Dove' look though. Not only does she have real, natural beauty, but she's essentially a pale white bird.

1 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

They look delicious! Is it too much to hope there will be one left for me tomorrow?