Well, that got out of hand quickly.

One minute you’re creaming butter and sugar…the next minute your life is consumed with cupcakes (of all things).

Want to know how many I made?

A lot: 22 dozen.  Which is 288, give or take a few extras, since sometimes a batch of mix makes slightly more than a dozen.  But for the ease of adding them up, 22 dozen.  It turns out that is a lot of cupcakes.  Especially when you have decided to ornament them in a fair amount of detail:

Pupcakes!  I made kitties (chocolate-orange), puppies (chocolate), bunnies (carrot), and some triple-choc deluxe ones (chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips, with a chewy hazelnut centre, topped with chocolate buttercream, a dot of vanilla icing and finely shredded chocolate).  This was an incredibly involved cake decorating undertaking. I did make a small amount of plain, simple ones, which may have been more for my sanity than anything else. The cakes added up quickly.

I spent all Saturday baking and all Sunday decorating.  By the end of it, I was starting to feel a little punch-drunk and the thought of dealing with cakes ever again made me feel mysteriously angry. I think I could go on to live a whole and happy life without ever baking another cake, to be honest with you.  And I don’t really want to taste another one for a while, either.  You say people make a living doing this? Crazy.  By late Sunday I was doing out-of-character stuff like licking the spoon I used making all the chocolate buttercream icing.  I don’t even like icing.  I should have the last batch of cupcakes out by Wednesday, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  I enjoyed making these cupcakes enormously, I kinda liked icing them (although I feel a little bad for roping M in — an innocent bystander who was pounced upon and put on decorating duty), but frankly, cupcakes: don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.

Still, I have not for a moment forgotten what a good cause this is for.  These cakes are being sold to raise money for the RSPCA, a charity very close to my heart.  I am sincerely proud to have been able to raise some funds for them, and the discomfort involved in making over 200 intricately-decorated cupcakes is nothing compared to what so many animals go through.