Pudding!

Mr. Birthday Boy likes his steamed pudding. He likes it, ok? He waits with his fork and spoon at the ready:

But what's that condiment? Maple syrup? No. Icing? No. It's Lyle's (if you say that with a southern accent you can invoke Lyle Lovett, the greatest country songwriter evar and no, I don't want to hear your opinions about Dolly and Wayne and David or Hank - it's Lyle, y'all.) Golden Syrup. It's a British thing.

The pudding, when its moment arrived, came to the table bedecked with candles, all fluffy and celebratory. Mr. Birthday Boy loved it, and was ready, ready, ready.

So here's how you do the Lyle's thing. You stick your spoon in there, see, then you twirl it to get the syrup onto the spoon without little stringy syrup lines dropping off onto the table.


Then you drizzle the syrup onto your slice of steamed pudding. [It's a lot like a pancake, in texture and flavor, but looks like a small cake and is sliced that way.]

If you're lucky - I mean really lucky - just as you're eating your 3rd or 4th piece of pudding the Cupcake Fairy will appear:

And what's that she's carrying? Why, cupcakes, of course. In four fabulous flavor combinations (vanilla with chocolate icing, chocolate with chocolate icing, vanilla with vanilla icing, and chocolate with vanilla icing).

After that, you'll want to ask yourself: what are we going to do next year? Can this be topped?