Twenty Five Cupcakes

Instead of a budding novelist, I am a mom this morning, blithely trashing the kitchen to make mounds of birthday treats.

Last night I asked my son how many kids were in his class so I could know how many birthday cupcakes he needed.

"There were twenty-four before Josh," he said.

"So that means . . . how many in your class?"

"Twenty-five!" he was surprised I couldn't figure it out by myself.

"And why did we need to mention Josh specifically?"

"Because he started school late. He broke two of his bones."

That's not too surprising. Josh is a BMX racer. I'm glad he's back in school, except for the fact that twenty-five is the WRONG number of cupcakes. As everyone knows, muffin tins are made to hold twelve muffins. Two tins hold twenty-four. So what does that mean if I need twenty-five?

After the kids were in bed I went downstairs and hunted up the cupcake liners. I only found one half-used package. Worried that I might have to run to the store in the morning I started counting them out. I only got to twenty-three! Then, as I saw my tomorrow morning swirl down the drain, I noticed that one liner had been stuck inside another and didn't get counted! I counted them all again and got . . . twenty-five! Hooray!

Feeling optimistic, I counted again. No luck. More cupcake liners did not condense out of the cupcake liner continuum. Twenty-five it was.

The next morning after breakfast, the boys gathered around and watched me fill the muffin tins with cupcake liners. I have two muffin tins that hold twelve each and one more muffin tin that holds six, so that's where the extra cupcake liner went. The boys went off to school, the cupcakes came out of the oven, I mixed up the frosting, and then hunted around for something to send the cupcakes to school in.

I finally found a nice cardboard flat that had held frozen orange juice concentrate. Frozen orange juice concentrate is just about the same diameter as your average cupcake. This is good, except the frozen orange juice concentrate comes in cases of TWENTY-FOUR!!!

Deep breaths.

It didn't look like it was going to work, but I had faith. I started frosting the cupcakes. One by one I put them in the box. And then a miracle occurred -


There's always room for one more!

And I'm such a good mom. I even remembered to send in some napkins.