There is that special type of mother who breastfeeds; who only makes organic baby food, who always finds pyjama tops to match the bottoms. I am not that parent.

My daughter and I were watching television the other day. (Yes, she watches television: shock, horror.)

A commercial came on, for some kind of dump-it pan. Apparently you dump all the ingredients you need for a meal into this pan. You don’t even need to stir them; you just throw the pan into the oven and walk away.

“Mummy, you need that,” she said.

“Maybe we could give it to daddy,” I said. “He does the cooking.”

“He already knows how to cook.”

“I know how to cook!”

“You don’t,” she said grimly, and started writing down the 1-800 number for the dump-it. Did I mention she’s seven, not 17?

“But …”

She grew stern. “Mummy, remember the cupcakes?”

The blasted cupcakes. It’s the thing she’ll tell her shrink about when she’s 40. I was trying to be a good mom. I tried to make cupcakes with her, the way they did on Full House and The Cosby Show back in the 1980s. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly how they did it on The Cosby Show. I used a box mix and a tub of pre-made icing, and my hair wasn’t remotely as glamorous as Phylicia Rashad’s. I confess, the icing wasn’t even in a tub, but in a tube that you squeeze. Apparently my eyesight wasn’t nearly as good as Phylicia’s either, because when it came to adding the water, I read ‘add six cups’.

After I added the liquid, the two of us looked at the overflowing bowl. There was water on the floor.

“Something doesn’t look right,” I said. I went back to the box and squinted at the instructions on the side. Was that ‘add one cup’?

I got rid of the water. Luckily, we had another box of mix in the cupboard. As I pulled it out, she made a face.

“Why don’t we wait until daddy comes home,” she said. She gave me a little pat on the arm, meant to comfort. “HE’LL know what to do.”