Mean Muffin

It is what it looks like. A muffin. A blueberry muffin. In bed. With Tara.
Here's why:
We have guests. Tara loves being with them. When bedtime comes, she does not want to be parted, but all that's between her, her guests, and being dragged off to bed by dad - "No, Papa!" - is a very good excuse to stay up longer. And it hasn't taken Tara long (less than 23 months actually) to work out that in her family, having to eat some cake for pudding is such a cake... I mean, excuse. So, bedtime comes, Tara looks at her exciting, expanded family gathered round the post dinner table, thinks, and demands: "Kuchen! Kuchen essen!"
Who would send a hungry 22-month-old of to bed?! I grant her a muffin. She nibbles. One nibble, five family minutes pass. Another nibble, another five family minutes pass. I confiscate the muffin. Muffins answer a higher call that that of being an excuse in this family.
"No! No! Kuchen!" Tara cries. ('No, no! [Gimme back that] Cake!')
"Aber du isst den Kuchen doch gar nicht," I protest, "und es ist SCHLAFENSZEIT für dich!"
(But you're not eating it, and it's bedime for you!)
"No, no! Kuchen! Kuchen HALTEN!" (No no, cake! HOLD cake!)
Right.
Clever.
But she gets her funny brains from somewhere, so the plan doesn't work, and following a brief parental debate, Tara is shuttled off to bed clinging to her uneaten excuse of a cake, which is fussed over, and carried lovingly on a big big plate.
It is cuddled, it is shushed, it is hugged and it is patted on the back. It gets the full favourite dolly treatment. And, the parental bedtime patrol relates, it is cried over bitterly when removed from her cuddles.
So it is taken to bed.
Must be one mean muffin that mummy has cooked up.
Must be one mean mummy to not let her stay up.