Maple Caramel Seven-Minute Frosting, with (pan)cakes underneath

I'm not naming which celebration this was for, because I think the internet at large already knows quite enough about what I celebrate when, thank you very much.

Do you ever get a taste-thought in your brain? I think that the closest word for it in English is "craving" (and no, I don't know of a word for it in any other languages), but craving implies that you are at some level obsessed with consuming the thing, and what I'm describing is more like when you close your eyes and see a picture in your mind, or when you are walking along and your brain plays music for you, and if you like it well enough, you try to draw it or describe it or write it down or in whatever way you can realize the idea which has come to you.

Anyway. Today I was thinking about whether or not to make cake for (un)said celebration, and the thought came to me: caramel. And then I remembered how I am wealthy enough-- unlike much of the rest of my life before now-- that I have REAL maple syrup to play with, culinarily.*

So this is what I did. I looked up a recipe for maple syrup caramel, and decided to "use" this one: pinch of yum magic vegan caramel sauce. And by use, I mean that I only used two of the four ingredients she lists; I substituted one, and left one out. (But I linked to it to give credit where credit is due, and besides which, if I could have those ingredients, I would have just gone with them). In my situation, though, I used a teacup in the microwave and put in 2T of maple syrup, 2T of oil, and 1/16t of salt, and microwaved it for a minute. And at the end of that I had a delicious tasting syrup at the bottom of a bunch of oil, so next time I'll be reducing the oil by half and deciding about further modifications from there.

But boy howdy did I mention how good it is?

OK. Next, I used Paula Deen's 7-minute frosting recipe, which I modified this time just because my eggs are oddly small (and which I usually modify by putting in 1 cup of sugar instead of a cup and a half) BUT the modification that matters this time is that instead of vanilla-- which never does taste good to me in frosting-- I put in two teaspoons (as in the kind you eat with teaspoons-- sorry I didn't measure, but I think they were pretty close to a standard teaspoon?) of the maple syrup caramel stuff. Every time I've tried to flavor this frosting recipe before, the flavoring has come out too strong, but not this time! Probably because the flavoring can be eaten straight up on its own. But this part of the recipe is definitely getting made again, especially since three ingredients in the microwave for one minute is my kind of recipe.

I dished out some frosting for Mom to eat (of course snitching as much as I myself wanted). Then I took the leftover oil-and-syrup, and mixed it in with the egg yolks, and then mixed that in with some cake mix, and then folded in the frosting that I thought would not be needed for the top of the cake, and then I put the whole shebang in the oven.

I'll tell you in the morning how it went.

IN THE MORNING: After tasting my cake experiment, I decided to eat my frosting with some pancakes I had made earlier. The flavoring which was just right for the frosting was too weak for the cake, which was also just a little dense. Meh. I never make cakes, partly because I've never liked them that much, partly because my body doesn't like ingredients that allow them to taste good: butter, milk, almonds, any form of coconut. I'll survive. Next time, maybe I'll just make meringues. Or pavlova.

*If I didn't have real maple syrup, I would definitely make some simple syrup by boiling 2 c. sugar** with 1 c. water and then adding a flavoring like mapleine or almond extract or something. It doesn't taste the same as maple syrup, but it tastes good enough that it's sometimes just what I'm in the mood for, over real maple syrup. I'm never in the mood for corn syrup faintly flavored with maple, though.

**OK, fine, most days I'm only cooking for myself and I haven't made a 2 cup batch of simple syrup in at least a decade, but what I DO do is put one tablespoon of sugar and one of water in a teacup and then microwave it for 30 seconds at a time until the viscosity gets to be syrupy-looking. This makes enough for me for one meal's worth of pancakes, and then I don't have to worry about putting leftover syrup in the fridge or whatever. The water boils off much more quickly in the microwave than on a stove, which is why after a couple of tries in which I ended up with crystallized sugar instead of syrup, I changed the proportion for the tiny version of the recipe.

How taking a walk with a three-year-old helped me figure out my writing goals

One day when my oldest niece was about three years old, I stopped in at my sister's house, which at the time was close to a credit union I belonged to. At some point in our conversation that day, we decided that I would take my niece with me on my errand to the credit union. I wanted to hang out with her; I had a couple of hours free; and the credit union was a twenty minute walk away, even if we walked very slowly.

Our plan worked perfectly. She got to walk the whole time, because I wasn't worried about getting there before it closed or in time for me to go do some other errand. Once we got to the window, she announced proudly to the teller, "I'm Cinderella!"

The teller looked at me in confusion. "Is that really her name?"

"Let me give you a clue. I'm her fairy godmother."

And then I did whatever business I had come to transact-- I truly don't remember what it was any more-- and then we walked back to her house, and all was well.

Now, the moral you might take from this story is that you should leave plenty of time for walks with  three-year-olds, and if that is the conclusion you draw, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. But I feel like there's an even more interesting lesson you could take away from it.

I realized as I was going home that I had two sets of goals for that walk. I wanted most to hang out with my niece and let her explore and have fun. But I also had an errand to run, and it was actually easier to accomplish the first goal once I had that second goal in mind.

I've come to think of these kinds of goals as end-goals and guardrail goals. For me, loving people, protecting the environment, and obeying the law are among my guardrail goals. They are all so important to me that the only way I would break one of them deliberately is if another guardrail goal were involved. But having end-goals as well makes keeping those guardrail goals more interesting, and sometimes even easier.

So, for instance, for a long time-- too long, for my taste-- one of my end goals was to get a bachelor's degree. And I finally have one! Along the way, I lived with roommates, which brought me into contact with others and gave me a chance to figure out how to love them both more and more effectively. Through my general education classes, I also learned enough science to be able to appreciate science writing and interpret it for myself. And in my philosophy classes, discussions about Kantian ethics would always start out with the caveat to his "never tell a lie" rule that we all agree to: if I have Jews hidden in my house and Nazis are at the door, I will definitely break the law.

But wait, you say. Getting an education is kind of a good in and of itself, so it's kind of not fair to be listing how it helps with all of those other things. Aren't there some end goals that aren't good?

Well, yeah. As we can see from the Nazi example mentioned above, if your end goal in and of itself violates a guardrail goal, you gotta chuck it.

But other than that, as far as I can tell, not only does the ethical human have the right to choose whatever end goals she likes; she may even be under obligation to do so, because they are so helpful in accomplishing those guardrail goals.

And that brings me to my writing goals. I want to bring delight, information, and helpfulness to others: that's an end goal. I want to be dependable (and of course honest) in my business relationships: that's a guardrail goal. And what I want for myself is a combination of end and guardrail goals: I want to write things which I enjoy writing (end goal); of course write ethically (which can get tricky when you write about real humans, but I would argue can even be an issue when you write about fantasy worlds-- so, guardrail goal); and at some point I would like to make a profit, which I am leaving as an end goal but would sure be a lot more comfortable if it were a guardrail goal. But it's best to leave guardrail goals as things have more control over, and end goals as things you have less control of, so there you have it.

I was able to distill these goals into a one sentence purpose statement, and it's held for-- let me check-- wow, since December 24th! Well, isn't that nice! (I checked the version history on the document where I listed my writing goals to figure that out.) I'm open to finding out more about what I want, but so far I'm holding to this one: I write to create joy.

I write to create joy.