In some cultures, it is traditional for Uncake Day to take place shortly after Pancake Day. On Uncake Day, sacks of flour are hidden away behind wooden partitions, eggs remain uncounted and ignored in their nests and cartons, and milk from cows is used to make pap or slops for the benefit of bedridden invalids. No pan may be used for the making of a cake, on pain of excommunication from whichever faith one professes, or execution, by the severing of one’s head or the ripping of one’s heart, bloody and throbbing, from one’s chest, depending on the savagery of that faith.

It has been said, by Clunk among others, that the savagery of a religious tradition is in direct correlation to its cake dogmas. Woolly-minded, cardigan-wearing followers of weedy milksop faiths will have few if any prohibitions on the eating of cake, including the pancake, that most panny of all cakes. Such vapid belief systems also use cake as a celebratory foodstuff at every opportunity, rather than acknowledging its numinous quality by restricting cakey joy to one or two days a year, as the barbaric and blood-drenched religions do.

In a certain light, when cooked just so, a pancake resembles a miniature edible sun. That, surely, tells us all we need to know.