The Apple Crumble That Could End My Marriage

We're quite a traditional family and so on Sundays we have a roast. For some reason, despite everyone normally eating their lunch at some point between midday and 1:30pm during the week, on a Sunday, lunch is at 2pm.

It's tradition.

Sometimes Mr PippaD (for it is he who cooks the roast each week) will prepare a dessert for us to share too, and this week, using up the last of the apples from the apple tree, he prepared an apple crumble.

Now. Lunch was, as always, superb.

But there is always a niggle that you, as the cook, can see, right?

Mr PippaD wasn't happy that the potatoes hadn't browned or crisped up as much as he would have liked, but to the children and me? They were bloomin' delicious.

He'd put a crumble for us into the oven when he served the meal, and so after we'd finished eating, the crumble would be ready to eat.

Mr PippaD dove back into the house when the alarm on the oven went off, because for some reason it's still warm enough for us to eat in the garden at the start of October, and then he returned a minute or so later with two bowls of apple crumble, both with a healthy serving of squirty cream.

We both eagerly tucked into our apple crumble.

And...

And it tasted better than normal.

Now I'm no savage. I'm not in the habit of making Mr PippaD feel bad... but. Well, this one tasted gooooooood.

Not that it doesn't normally taste good. It was just that this one tasted...

Better?

Hang on. Better? Was it actually better?

Oh no, it was better.

I was trying to work out what was making it better.

What was it that made this different?

Same butter.

Same flour.

Same sugar.

Same apples.

Wait.

I could taste cinnamon.

Cinnamon?

Yes, that's it. It was the cinnamon.

There was more cinnamon than normal.

Wait.

Was there normally cinnamon?

I couldn't normally distinguish the taste.

There was a problem now. Of course there was. I'm involved.

How could I now tell Mr PippaD that something he'd made is especially delicious without making it seem that every crumble he had made before was... well, subpar.

I decided to poke gently.

“Did you do anything different when making this?” I asked.

I got a blank look.

“Did you... Did you add more cinnamon than normal?”

“Oh yeah, I added too much by accident and just went with it.”

Did I dare?

Did I now dare to tell him that this was the best crumble he'd ever made?

Wow. Talk about a dilemma.

This could be marriage-ending...

“Why?”

“Oh, it just tastes good...”

I decided to risk it.

“It's actually the best apple crumble I've tasted. It's, it's delicious.”

I'm not sure when the divorce proceedings will start, but I'm sure they are coming.