Cherry cupcake on a calf

The snow has buried the lane up to the second gatepost now, and the coach from Keswick has not come since Tuesday. Mr Pryce says we will be cut off until the thaw, which he says with the air of a man who has ordered the wrong amount of flour. We have eleven guests in the north parlour and a fiddler who will not stop playing "Barbara Allen" no matter how many times I ask him.

Last night I made cupcakes for little Ada Moss, whose birthday fell on the very day the road closed. There was no proper icing sugar left, so I beat the last of the butter with the sugar we had and a spoon of cream from the dairy crock, and it came up thick and pale, very like the drifts outside the scullery window. I piped it in swirls the way you taught me, high and tight, then pressed a cherry from the jar onto the top. The cases were red paper, the only colour I could find in the stores, and they glowed against the dark of the hearth.

Ada sat with the tin in her lap and would not eat the first one. She said it looked too pretty to spoil. I told her that was the whole point of a cupcake, and she laughed so hard she got frosting on her nose, and for a while nobody in the room was thinking about the snow.

Do come in April if the roads allow. I will keep one cherry back for you in the jar.

Yours in flour and haste, Nell