Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

Pistachio Cake with Raspberry and Lemon My Bubby turned 21 this year!  Whether or not we're living in a Simulation the passage of time, ever faster, is the only thing we can count on.  It was a joyous occasion and celebrated with a cookout attended by folks from all areas of his life, including friends and teachers from high school and now college.  He hasn't been this excited and happy since, well, his high school graduation a year ago!  For the occasion we "inaugurated" our new patio, though with a bit of trepidation because thunderstorms were in the forecast.  We set out chairs on the patio, and figured the rain would hold off long enough to grill, but we didn't dare set out the food and hold the entire party in the yard. This worked out nicely enough since in our house you can easily transition from living room to sunroom to patio.   With the threat of rain, we put the food out on a table in the sunroom.  There were peanuts, in a beautiful Pol...

Working on a cake that needed a last-minute raspberry filling, I came across Sugar Geek Show's recipe. I decided to try it because it was late at night and it wasn't a reduction. The whole thing comes together pretty quickly. In this recipe you dissolve a bag of frozen raspberries in sugar and after it boils once you sieve it to get rid of the seeds, then continue with the recipe. The next step is to add a slurry made with cornstarch and water, instead of adding cornstarch directly into the mixture which usually results in lumps. I made the slurry before getting started and noticed it was drying out a bit, but would come back together with a whisk. Maybe that was the problem, maybe I should have added a bit more water, because I there were several cornstarch blobs in the mixture that never did dissolve and that I had to remove. I did this by removing the blobs I could see then sieving the mixture again. Perhaps because of this, the filling never really set up as a filling overn...