Mine's with golden syrup

How do you take your pancake? I don't want to hear about any savoury fillings ....you can keep your smoked salmon and cream cheese fillings and your baked pancakes in a creamy mushroom and cheese sauce. There is a time and a place. Those are probably delicious but not for Shrove Tuesday. You can also keep your American pancakes with maple syrup, bacon and blueberries for breakfast on Sundays (delicious). No Pancake Day is about thin, golden flecked pancakes, tossed into the air from the pan and then lain gently onto a plate for immediate scoffing.

It's about the children and grown-ups queueing up for their next pancake and the cook chained to the cooker, pouring the batter into the frying pan and teasing it around til it's ready to flip. At 88 I pour the batter into the hot pan with a tea cup simply because my mum always used a cup. The first pancake is usually a disaster and by the third or fourth I have built the courage up to somersault the pancake using only a flick of the wrist. When everyone has eaten and I am about to eat my pancake, David takes over and does the next round of pancakes. He is a consummate flipper. And there is always someone who will be there right to the end to eat the very last pancake.

I take my pancakes with golden syrup because that was how I had them as a child. The children have them with maple syrup and David has them with lemon and sugar although this year he combined golden syrup with a little lemon juice quite successfully. My brother was here tonight so joined us for the pancake feast. He like me enjoys golden syrup but insisted that the golden syrup had to come out of a green and golden tin and not a plastic easy pour bottle. You see traditions can be very complex.

Finally do you roll or not? I don't simply because I think my pancake lasts a bit longer even as I scoff away but to David it's much more of a patient construct, spreading the syrup and squeezing the lemon and then gently rolling the pancake to get layers of flavour. If truth be told I think David was just a tad disappointed this year that we had real lemons and not a small plastic lemon shaped opaque bottle on the table. Clearly what you put on your pancakes is important but the receptacle from whence that topping comes is just as crucial.  Everyone has their ways and these are ours.