Its all syrup

well, its been a while since I last posted, so I figure I SHOULD post
something.
Since I have been living alone I have tried my hand in cooking. I have
entered these deep waters very gently starting with the easiest of things:
boiling water, spaghetti, eggs, French toast, pancakes, and the most
challenging for me so far: syrup.
Now, I know, many of you can just run to the local grocer and select from
such a variety of syrups, its mind boggling why someone would even need such
a huge selection of syrups. Here, syrup can not be found as such. So I have
attempted to make my own.
At first I was wanting to be creative. So I researched the web for syrup
recipes and found some with apples and pears and cinnamon. I like all of
these ingredients so much! And it was simple enough, cut of apples, pears,
throw in some sugar and a little bit of water into a saucepan and there you
have it. I have done this recipe a few times now with great success! One
day, when I was feeling very sure of my syrup making abilities, I thought to
myself, " if I can make this exotic fruit syrup, surely I can make the plain
ole everyday syrup (sans the maple extract)" So, wanting to try something
new, and not having any fruit in the apartment and feeling a bit too lazy to
walk a few hundred feet to one of the sellers; I decided to make plain ole
syrup (sans the maple extract). Seems easy enough. You just mix sugar and
water and let it boil until it gets sticky. I am not sure what happened
exactly, but the syrup jumped from the liquid state to a thick black mess,
very tar-like in feel and appearance. This made a horrible stench in the
apartment and had to open all the windows. Then when I took it off the fire
(gas heat), it quickly become much like plastic! A hard, black, stinking
mess I had. I thought I had lost the spoon and pan I used because it setup
rock hard (rock candy?). But with a little hot water and time, it all came
out of the pan just fine. So I figured I must not have been paying
attention. So, today, I thought I would try my hand again and keep a careful
eye on it. I am not much for multitasking, but I thought I could do it. So I
add sugar, water, a little vanilla sugar, and some cinnamon and let it cook.
I kept a watchful eye on this brew as I was making the pancakes. The brew
looked good, smelled good, and was nice and sticky. So I took it off the
stove, and started to pour it onto my pancakes, but I noticed it wasn't very
flowy. Then it setup and became like really old frosting, nice and hard. But
it wasn't black and it tasted good, but it was like rock candy on my
pancakes. But I would say over all, it looks like I'm getting better at it.
If you would like to add your favorite syrup recipe, please do.