ところへ sentence question

Japanese Language
1

I’ve been studying grammar and came across this sentence that tripped me up (possibly because I’m overthinking it). It’s supposed to demonstrate the usage of ところ with へ in the situation of stating just after something occurred, something else did. The sentence was written (lack of kanji and all) as follows:

ケーキができ上あがったところへ子こどもたちが帰かえってきた。

At first I interpreted this as “the children returned just after the cake was finished” but I know that へ is often used as a place-locator-particle similar to に (don’t know the technical term, sorry). So would this instead be “the children returned to the just-finished-cake-place”?

Thanks in advance!

2

The “two things happened at the same time” interpretation is easy to understand and seems natural, while the “children returned to the place where the cake was just finished” seems strained and awkward, even if both interpretations would be technically possible.

3

All right, thank you! I’ll just have to practice with this to get more comfortable with it.