From one birthday drama to another...

Yay, he made it! Not the cake. I made that (of more, below...). But Youngest made it to his 2nd birthday party, after the pencillin worked its magic and erased all tell-tale signs of the spotty viral infection he went down with earlier in the week.

As it was a swimming party we'd planned, I scanned his naked body with an especially critical eye this morning. But there was not a single spot left to give the game away. So, many thanks to Maternal Tales for her inspired suggestion to camouflage him with a wetsuit and Metropolitan Mum's creative idea to give the party a last-minute retro theme of red spots. But in the end, we got away with it!

And fun was had by all. For my part, I was relieved that all I had to do was bake a birthday cake, as the swimming-party-deal meant that party guests were all treated to a slap-up birthday lunch at the adjacent cafe.

Which really was very fortunate since - I'm embarrassed to admit - the above cake took me all, and I do mean all, of yesterday to complete.

I thought I'd be really smart and and get the cake made first thing, leaving me plenty of time to construct the 'sandcastles' on their island base, ice them with appropriately sand-coloured icing and adorn them with some beach-themed decorations. I imagined I'd have it all wrapped up by lunch time, leaving me free to enjoy a leisurely evening and much-needed early-ish night. So at 7am, I mixed the batter together, divided it into two cake tins and popped the sandcastles-to-be into the oven. Feeling rather pleased with myself for such efficiency, I set the timer and went to get the children dressed.

25 minutes later, I carefully lifted the two cake tins out of the oven. The surfaces looked a teensy bit wobbly so I left them in their tins for a further ten minutes, before turning them out to cool. And that's when disaster struck. The first one flopped out fairly happily. But as I tried to extricate the second cake from it's non-stick mould, it kind of imploded, leaving big corners of chocolate cake on the cooling rack and hot, gooey chocolate mousse dripping all over the kitchen floor. I bravely tried not to mind and salvaged what I could (ie: served the kids, husband and myself cake for breakfast), scraping as much of the un-set chocolate mess into bowls (I'm sure it must be useful for something, mustn't it?).

I then made a quick batch of cupcakes to take to our playdate - phew, all fine, so I obviously hadn't completely lost my touch.

My next chance to attempt the birthday cake again was at lunch time, when Youngest was napping and Daughter was concentrating very hard on colouring in a picture of Ariel. So, armed with freshly-bought supplies and a clean dishwasher-load of baking tools, I re-read the recipe and followed it to the absolute letter (I swear!). Into the oven, Cake No. 2 went. It couldn't fail this time; I'd done everything right. Except that fail it did.

When the timer beeped at me, I nervously opened the oven door and checked the surface of the cakes. They still looked fractionly wobbly so I left them cooking for a further 5 minutes. When I looked again, the edges were starting to turn black so I whipped them out pronto and figured that since they were close to burning, they must be cooked. Right?

Gently tipping the cakes out onto the cooling rack...wahddya know? Once again, the second cake just fell apart on me. Set outside; molten inside.

Now I consider myself a fairly proficient baker. It's a rare week that I don't knock out a batch of cupcakes, flapjacks, muffins or brownies. And I'd never, ever, EVER had a cake do this to me. What was going on?? Was the oven broken? Was the recipe a dud?

Not daring to test the latter for a third time, I shunned Peggy Porschen (of Konditori & Cook fame, so she should know...) and turned desperately to Nigella's Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame.

Thankfully, Nigella won the day and, ta da, I now had my chocolate sponge base. All I had to do was chop them up and pile into sandcastle impressions. Which should be easy, shouldn't it? Except that with two under-4s running around the house, desperate for attention and Sailor Boy insisting on authenticity for the sandcastles in relation to their island (what direction the waves should be lapping compared to the flags; what height the island should be to the sea-tinted buttercream icing without it resembling a tsunami etc etc), I was starting to lose the will to live.

Now I'm all for perfection. But by 11pm, I really had run out of steam and ended up scattering a load of chocolate shells over everything and just hoped the 2-year old guests wouldn't be too demanding.

Next year, I won't set myself up for such a fall. I've heard Waitrose do very nice, themed birthday cakes. And even though there isn't one of their scrummy supermarkets on the Island, I think it's well worth the ferry fare across the Solent.