Presenting current date in full text format

I am using jenssegers/date and carbon to display current date and time.

I can display full date in textual way by use of this code:

echo Date::now()->format('l j F Y H:i:s'); // example from jenssegers docs

Now, in a Codrops demo the date is presented as

<div class="slide__element slide__element--date">Saturday, 25<sup>th</sup> of October 2043</div>

My problem

How to build a helper to display the current date exactly in this fashion, including wrapping the th (or nd, st) with the sup element?

>>> \Carbon\Carbon::now()->format("l j <\s\up>S</\s\up> F Y H:i:s")
=> "Friday 4 <sup>th</sup> November 2016 22:11:16"

Note the s and u are escaped.

format() takes a date formatting string, you can add whatever chars you want to that string, you just have to escape them if they match PHPs formatting string characters.