2445. Birthday treat

Babette made twenty little cakes in her muffin tin. They were sponge cakes in which she cut a circular piece from the top, filled it with whipped cream, then sliced and set the cut out top to make a butterfly shape. She called them her butterfly cakes.

With the cream and the sugar and the butter she knew it wasn’t particularly healthy, but what the heck! a birthday comes but once a year.

For breakfast she had two sausages and a fried egg as well as a… no! Not toast, but fried bread; which is a slice of bread soaked in milk and fried in lard. For lunch it was a hamburger and French fries from a local chain, for although she liked to cook, three meals in a day was a bit much work, especially since it was her birthday.

At last came the evening meal. Babette poured herself a wine, set the table complete with her twenty little cakes, and began to prepare the main course of East Lothian beef, braised truffle barley and Scottish girolles. It was to be an early dinner, because as a birthday treat Babette had booked into the finest restaurant in town. She want to see how her cooking compared to theirs.