2¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup oat or wheat bran

egg replacement for 2 eggs

1 cup rennet

½ cup brown rice syrup

¼ cup apple sauce

¼ cup safflower oil

1½ cups grated carrot

4–6 ounces crushed dates

½ cup raisins

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

‘I just wanted to try out something new,’ said Caroline, trying to look suitably humble and helpful the next morning when she turned up with a Tupperware box. ‘It’s nothing really, I just tossed them together.’

‘What the hell is brown rice syrup when it’s at home?’ said Pearl, glancing down the recipe. ‘Safflower oil?’

‘They’re perfectly easy to source,’ lied Caroline.

‘Don’t call it “surprise’’,’ said Issy over her shoulder. ‘Every child knows that “surprise” means hidden vegetables. Call it “white sugar chocolate toffee delight’’.’

‘It’s simple, wholesome fare,’ said Caroline, trying to make a Jamie Oliver face. In fact, it had taken her five hours slaving over her Neff faux-aged pale cream country kitchen table and much cursing to get the mixture right and make the cupcakes stick together. How did Issy make it look so damn easy, throwing ingredients together to produce cakes that tasted light as air and melted in the mouth? Well, of course she was using evil refined ingredients that would send her to an early grave. But as she’d mixed and reworked them, Caroline had had an image in her head – of her wholesome treats outselling the sugary rubbish and becoming famous; eclipsing the Cupcake Café with Caroline’s Fresh Cooking; converting children all over the world to the benefits of a healthier, slenderer lifestyle … She wouldn’t be the part-time member of staff then, no siree …

Pearl and Issy looked at one another, their hands wavering by their mouths.

‘Well?’ said Caroline, still half-demented from lack of sleep. Her cleaner was going to have a lot of scrubbing to do that morning. ‘Give one to Louis.’

‘Iss please!’

Pearl put her hand down. ‘Yes, in a minute.’

Issy fought an urgent desire to scrape the bits of raw carrot off her tongue. And what was that custardy aftertaste that hinted at broccoli?

‘Here, little man.’ Caroline took the box over to him.

‘Um, he’s not hungry,’ said Pearl desperately. ‘I’m trying to cut down, you know.’

But Louis had already cheerfully stuck his fat little paw in the box.

‘Ta, Caline.’

‘Thank you,’ said Caroline, unable to help herself. ‘Don’t say ta, say thank you.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be saying either in a minute,’ muttered Pearl to Issy, who was surreptitiously slurping coffee and rolling it round her mouth to try to remove the taste. Pearl had simply scarfed some of Issy’s brand new batch of Victoria sponge cupcakes to change the taste and Issy didn’t blame her for a second. Caroline fixed her eyes on Louis expectantly.

‘This is much nicer than your normal silly old cakes, darling,’ she said insistently. Louis bit into the cupcake-shaped object confidently enough, but gradually, as he started to chew, his face took on a confused, upset expression, like a dog chewing a plastic newspaper.

‘There we go, darling,’ she said encouragingly. ‘Yummy, huh.’

Louis signalled his mother with his eyes desperately, then simply, as if it wasn’t connected to him in any way, let the lower half of his jaw drop open so that the contents of his mouth started to fall out and crumble to the floor.

‘Louis!’ shrieked Pearl, dashing over to him. ‘Stop doing that immediately.’

‘Yucky, Mummy! Yucky! Bleargh bleargh bleargh!’

Louis began frantically shoving his hand over his tongue to scrape off any remaining pieces of the cake.

‘Yug, Mummy! Yug, Caline! Yug!’ he cried accusingly, as Pearl gave him a drink of milk to calm him down and Issy fetched the dustpan and brush. Caroline stood there with a pinkish blush at the top of her very high cheekbones.

‘Well,’ she said, when Louis was quite himself again, ‘obviously his palate has been completely ruined by junk.’

‘Hmm,’ said Pearl crossly.

‘Caline,’ said Louis seriously, leaning over to make his point. ‘Bad cake, Caline.’

‘No, yummy cake, Louis,’ said Caroline tightly.

‘No, Caline,’ said Louis. Issy hastily got in the middle before it turned into a genuine argument between a forty-year-old and a two-year-old.

‘It is,’ she said, ‘a brilliant idea, Caroline. Absolutely great.’

Caroline eyed her beadily. ‘Well, I still own copyright on the recipe.’

‘Um, well …’ said Issy. ‘But obviously, well, yes. Of course. We could call them Caroline’s cupcakes, would that work?’

Caroline was reluctant to hand over the rest of the cakes (Issy didn’t want her sneaking them to a customer; she trusted Caroline absolutely with money, stock and hours but didn’t trust her one iota in terms of thinking she knew best when it came to their clients’ tastes) but Issy insisted she needed them for an experiment, and, well, it was true that they hadn’t stuck together as well as Caroline had hoped. Rennet wasn’t quite as good for making delicious firm cakes as the all-natural cookbook had assured her it would be. Issy wasn’t even sure the cakes would be all right for the compost she’d started handing over to the Hackney City Farm, but subtly got rid of them anyway.

And there were two good effects immediately: Caroline was absolutely right about one thing. There was a market for ‘healthy’ cupcakes.

‘Caroline’s cupcakes’, as amended by Issy, little apple sauce, raisin and cranberry muffins in tiny baking cases with fire engines or pink umbrellas on them, were an instant hit with mothers who were anxious to avoid their children getting stuck into icing once a day, and Issy faithfully added a kilo of carrots to their stock order every week then took some home each night. Caroline genuinely believed they had gone into the recipe. Helena and Ashok, who appeared to have practically moved in (Helena explained that the doctor’s single-person digs left a lot to be desired and would leave a lot to be desired even if one were a dog, ferret or rat), ate a lot of soup. But Issy never did find a use for the rennet.