See you in an hour or two...' It's mid-afternoon, and I feel a small heave of excitement as I put down the phone, and think 'cake'. It's baking hot outside - but baking cool in the kitchen. The kids have been messing about with the puppies on the lawn, and are very sweaty and grubby. 'We're going to make a cake!' I yell, trying to shout them in. The timing is lucky... puppy fatigue has already set in. Puppies are dropped and scattered in the rush for the kitchen.

'I'll get the mixing bowl,' says Oscar.

'Hands, hands, hands!' I shout.

'They're not dirty,' says Oscar, 7.

'The puppies licked them clean,' giggles Chloe, 9.

'I licked a puppy!' says Freddie, 3.

'OK... no hands, no cake...'

Hands are washed. Flour and sugar are brought to the table. The butter alarm goes off in my head. Will there be enough soft butter in the butter dish? Or will I have to get a new pat of hard stuff out of the fridge? If the former, we'll make a Victoria sponge. If the latter, we'll make that delicious Elizabeth David chocolate cake where the butter melts with the chocolate and you add ground almonds instead of flour.

I locate the butter dish and it's got more than half a pat in it. Brilliant. 'OK,' I announce. 'We're going to make a Victoria sponge.'

'But I want to make that chocolatey cake where you melt everything in the saucepan,' says Oscar.

'No!' shrieks Chloe. 'That's yucky! I want to make Victoria's sponge.'

'Want to make dot coms!' says Freddie. He means drop scones. Or rather, he means dot coms, which is what all of us now call drop scones.

'O-kayyy,' I say, beginning to visualise the creaming of butter, melting of chocolate, dropping of scones. 'Why don't we...' - pause for dramatic effect - '.... make... all three!'

The recklessness of this suggestion causes a minor sensation - clapping, jumping and eye-rolling.

'OK, Oss, get a whole butter from the fridge, chop it up, and put it in this pan. Then get two whole bars of chocolate from the cupboard, break them up, and put them in too. Chloe, we're going to weigh three eggs for Victoria's sponge. Choose the biggest you can find.'

'187g!' she declares

'Now we need the same of caster sugar, the same of the lovely soft butter, and the same of the self-raising flour.' Chloe unleashes her talent for precision weighing, and 187g of each of the four ingredients are soon laid out in four separate bowls.

She puts the sugar in with the butter, which is so soft it can be whisked, rather than beaten.

'You have to keep going till it's all light and fluffy.' 'It's hard!' 'No it's not, it's soft!' 'I mean it's difficult!'

After another 20 seconds of crazed whisking, Chloe drops the whisk into the bowl, and does a good mime of her arm falling off.

'Brilliant. Now the eggs, a bit at a time. OK, then hold the bowl and let Freddie have a go. Oss, how's the butter and chocolate?'

'Jolly nearly melted.'

Back at Victoria Station, I'm trickling beaten eggs into the bowl Chloe is holding, and around which Freddie is whirling the whisk. 'Slow down Freddie. I'm going to add the flour.' As soon as it's sifted in, Freddie speeds up, sending a cloud of flour puffing into Chloe's face.

'Freddie! No!' she shrieks, 'you're ruining it!' I put my hand on Freddie's to slow the whisk to a gentle stir, and tip another shake of flour into the sieve to compensate for what has left the bowl. Together we witness that magic moment when the grainy, almost-curdled, butter-sugar-egg mix is brought together by the flour into a classic, time-honoured cake batter of the kind that flops lazily over the whisk - and just has to have a finger dipped in it.

Chloe uses the 'lastlik' rubber spatula to divide the sponge batter between the two tins. She makes such a good job of it that I'm tempted to weigh each tin, just to see how equal they are. But I realise that that way madness, or at least OCD, lies. So I put the tins straight in the oven.

'Now we need to whisk the egg whites, to finish Oscar's cake.' With me holding the bowl and Chloe whisking like a dervish, the transformation from translucent slime to heavenly clouds of soft white foam takes less than a minute. Fluffy white mousse meets sticky brown goo and, for a moment, the chances of emulsification look remote. But gradually the chocolate yields and the two begin to merge.

'Will this be a chocolate sponge?' asks Chloe.

'Not exactly. It'll be a bit spongey, and a bit fudgey. We could call it Chocolate Fudge Cube Cake...' I silently ask ED's forgiveness as I slip the cake on to the oven shelf beside the two sandwich tins.

'What about my dot coms?' asks Freddy. The easiest recipe in the world, bar toast, we make them in the same bowl as the Victoria sponge, without even washing it up. Six tablespoons of self-raising flour, two of sugar, three eggs and a trickle of melted butter. Then just enough milk till the batter will 'drop' from the spoon, into a lightly greased hot pan. A minute a side, taking it in turns to flip, and by the time the cakes are ready we've made twenty.

The cakes are out, upside-down on wire racks. Victoria's sandwich is being frantically fanned by Oscar and Chloe. The scrunch of tyres, and the yapping of puppies, announce the arrival of our friends.

We knew they were coming, and we baked a cake. Or two.