A story of a cake.

Once upon a time in a cottage in a village somewhere on the edge of the Cotswolds, there lived a mama bear and her three little cubs. Every day, the mama bear would make porridge for her cubs, she would bake bread and hang the washing on the line. Whilst the washing swayed in the breeze she would gently rock her self back and forth, back and forth in her rocking chair by the fire whilst she lovingly knitted one of her cubs a new jumper for the coming winter.

Okay, so this is where the record scratches.

So, let me tell you a TRUE story about a harassed ex mama bear who decided that the time had come for her to embark on a three year midwifery degree course...whilst attempting to stay afloat with her cubs (who were at times acting more like wolf cubs than cute cuddly bears), put a meal on the table each day that contained a microgram of veg and didn't come out of a can, ensure the cubs were suitably dressed for the winter in clothes that were patched together (on occasions with sellotape - temporarily mind you!) and the porridge lingered in the pot so long that it was used for the youngest cub's model sculpture for homework - late of course!

One fine long day, she returned home from work to discover a request demand from the cubs' school for a cake for a bake sale, not 24 hours later. The mother bear smiled growled and put the cake plate aside vowing to bake the following afternoon. Of course, as in all good fairy tales, the story doesn't always go according to plan and, the mother bear, being a student midwife and dutiful at that a freakin' eager beaver, attended a homebirth with her mentor that following afternoon, returning to the den, sleepy and tired at 10pm that night.
On being greeted by the feckin' plate, she realised that she didn't have time to go out and buy one, taking the wrapping off and claiming a hand made job make one that night, so she decided she would get up the next morning as she had been rather uncharacteristically growly with her offspring, and bake a cake.

The following morning she arose at dawn and set to work. An hour later she had a perfect cake sitting on the counter top waiting for icing. A carrot cake with lemon icing - quite a work of art ;-) However, she had had to ice it later in the day due to it still being warm, so took it to the school at lunchtime.

The rest of this bit is mindnumbingly boring, so I'll skip a few chapters, your toddler doesn't know this story so won't work out that I missed out the middle to save time, thus repeating it to you word for word.

The mother bear went up to the school at the end of the day and bought some cupcakes from the bake sale so that she could contribute to the lives of her children, feel less guilty.

The next day her middle bear called her up on the phone to tell her that there had been some cakes leftover from the previous day and he had decided to buy one for us all to share for dinner that evening.
He excitedly explained that he had bought one with lemon icing as lemon icing is his very favourite type of icing.
He then explained that this cake was a carrot cake with lemon icing and he was very much looking forward to having some for tea.

I think it is fair to say at this point that the mother bear would have liked to have said something rather indiscreet containing many "bleeps" and not quite for the ears of a little cake loving bear. Instead she realised that if you decide to continue to be a mother bear when studying to become a midwife, the egg will indeed end up on your face!