Maple Oatmeal Cake with Broiled Coconut Topping

'Henceforth be masterless.'
Which is all very well, but it isn't freedom. Rather the reverse. A hopeless sort of constraint. It is never freedom till you find something you really positively want to be.
-DH Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature

Khyron is a 30 foot tall commander of the
Zentraedi space fleet. He likes cookies and
pop music.

When I was a kid, I did not have heroes. This made certain grade school writing assignments difficult. After agonizing attempts to relate a cast of acceptable historical figures to my very sharply realized self, I’d basically pick at random. My hero is Benjamin Franklin because he had great taste in hats and wrote the almanack. And a month later my hero is Rachael Carter because she convincingly portrays life as a fish for the common reader. Everyone from Martin Luther King in my bored-attempts-at-an-easy-A-through-name-dropping moments to Sir Francis Drake in my more random moments to Lord Khyron, the villain from Robotech, in my more cynical moments got an essay dedicated to them. I don’t know what conclusions my teachers must have drawn about my hopes, dreams, and personality.

It’s not that I didn’t want to be something more than I was. I passed through both a backhoe operator and dire pegacorn stage. I read several children’s guides to heavy machinery and tried my hardest to extrude serrated spikes and metal wings. Eventually I developed more adult aspirations - become marine biologist - and more clearly articulated goals - fill in missing pieces of leatherback sea turtle life cycle and use information to protect young turtles from waste plastic.

Goal setting!

American hero rhetoric mystifies me. We start with these essays in grade school and really develop them into an art by high school. The dude who saves a kid from a storm drain qualifies as a hero. All firefighters are heroes. The lady who whistleblows on a pharmaceutical company’s systematic defrauding of the elderly is also a hero. Why the need to venerate? Sure these people are great. Send the firemen some tax money. I’d bake the dude a cake and let’s throw a nice party for the lady. We can hand out medals and maybe have a band. Not making fun here, saying thanks with more than words is nice. But model my life on these people? That’s asking too much.

Setting someone up as a hero implies an unobtainable goal, an ideal you can always strive for but never reach. Many of these modern day heroes are situational. We can mentally and physically fortify ourselves, but few of us will ever get the chance to snatch a child from a storm drain, thankfully.

As for semi-situation-independent heroes? Well, as with so many other things, I’m only going to live as me once. While I’m alive, I may as well believe I’m fucking great. I’d rather not be comparing myself to Benjamin Franklin who, as DH so aptly put it, was “Middle-sized, sturdy, snuff-coloured Doctor Franklin, one of the soundest citizens that ever trod or 'used venery'.” Thank you DH. You are not my hero but I loved every page of Studies in Classic American Literature.

Striving for the approval of others is a sure way to be miserable, especially for my personality type, and the only way to assure that you become DH Lawrence. Of course you have to put in the work to become a skilled author, secure an agent and publication, and do a little self promotion. Then there’s luck, timeliness, uncontrollable factors. But it really helps to put on a dress made of giant plastic bubbles and go out and loudly make your fame. Notice me notice me, you must cry, and also read my book! In the current age it helps to have money and/or be sexy. Perhaps this has always helped... If all goes your way you can get a ten book deal, gad about the world with your lovely wife/amanuensis, and leave behind a legacy of classic, much read and loved novels and essays.

Benjamin contriving money out of
the Court of France.

Benjamin Franklin was canny. He knew the value of a flamboyant hat. But why spend your life trying to live up to other’s standards? Why not just please yourself. I suppose an argument is to be made for the self effacing or obscure hero. But again, why model yourself on another person’s life? Why have a hero who by definition you cannot be? Why cultivate a goal you cannot achieve?

Especially since it is perfectly possible to set challenging, meaningful goals for yourself and meet them in yourself, for yourself, without comparison to or judgement by others. Over the past two years I’ve cultivated the abilities to run a marathon and read Finnish. If I'd paid much attention to others, I wouldn't be able to do either of these things, which aside from being fun in themselves, have catapulted me into a chain of happy adventures. Give me another two and I’ll be running marathons dressed as a potato because it's just fun and games at that point and translating Finnish books. These things make me feel great and drive my life in positive directions, not comparing myself to Sir Francis Drake. Those goddamn Elizabethan ruffs look itchy and unflattering anyway.

So yeah, heroes? Products of opportunity, striving to please others, or goals you inherently can’t reach. No thanks. There is a type of hero I find fascinating though, and that’s a hero in the traditional sense of the word, a legendary, often partially divine being who does impossible things. Cuchulainn, Tomoe, Väinämöinen, Odysseus, Kaguya-hime, Davy Crockett - another man who knew the value of a smart hat.

You wanna be a hero? Appearance is important. Cuchulainn is still most famous for his warp-spasm, a battle rage induced transformation in which his hair stood straight up in spikes and threw off sparks Dragon Ball Z style. Tomoe: the sexiest concubine which of course entails hime-hime hair. Väinämoinen looked unbelievably old and sported a wizard beard. I can’t really remember about Odysseus except that he was about as cut as most ancient Greeks. Kaguya-hime was a miniscule space princess. I don’t know what signaled space princessness to the feudal Japanese, but she probably looked like one of our more imaginative pop stars. With hime hair, of course. Davy Crockett: poorly tanned rawhide has an unforgettable smell.

Cuchulainn in full warp spasm. Each strand of hair can
spear an apple.

There are no apples in space.

I'd like to talk more about culture heroes because they are multidimensionally interesting. But that is for another post. And I'm going to pull the same trick with the cake!

The entire baking project is a spiced oatmeal cake with a maple custard filling, maple frosting, and a broiled coconut topping. It’s a lot of recipes to include in one post and a lot of work to do all at once, so here’s the custard and the frosting which can be made ahead and kept in the fridge for several days. The topping should be made at the same time as the cake, so look for those recipes in the following post about the ever mutable culture hero in literature and folk metal. I’m going to have to stick to dancing around in the forest with kanteles singing about bear hunts on this one, but if anyone can clue me into some Japanese folk metal about the perennially popular space princess or Amaterasu or even just the adventures of some tanuki, that would be great.

Three chia custard layers!

Maple Chia Seed Custard

Whisk together in a bowl:
2 Tablespoons chia seeds
1/6 cup maple syrup
3/6 cup soy, almond, or oat milk
(Achieve these weird measures painlessly by busting out your ⅓ cup measure, using it once for the milk, filling it to the halfway mark with maple syrup and then topping it off with the remaining milk. The idea is to get ⅔ cups of liquid including the flavoring.)

Whisk for a few minutes, let set for five to ten minutes, then whisk again. Repeat process until the seeds thicken to custard consistency.  This may take about an hour.


Maple Frosting

Beat together until smooth:
3 Tablespoons of margarine
1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

Add in cautious parts up to ¼ cup of maple syrup until desired consistency is reached.