Fabulous Fillings: Raspberry & Chambord Curd

One of my belly dancing teachers turned 50 this week and to celebrate I made her a birthday cake featuring all of her favourite kick-ass females from scifi and her all-time favourite female icon: Joan Collins. 

I went with a dark chocolate mud cake with a milk chocolate ganache. I have been on a real 'filling kick' lately and it has opened up an exciting new world of cake flavours. I decided I wanted to make something really special for this cake, something elegant and not too sweet. A filling for adults. I asked around and a friend shared this recipe with me, it is truly delicious and, despite my previous comment about it being for adults, it could easily be used for a kid's cake (though you might leave out the alcohol). A note for those not used to working with fillings: it requires a ganache dam to contain it unless you like the look of blood-red liquid leaking out the sides of your cake.

Ingredients

500g frozen unsweetened raspberries, thawed
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp lemon juice
2 heaping tablespoons corn flour
2 tbsp Chambord liqueur 

Method

Thaw raspberries and strain juice from berries.  Add enough water to the juice to get 3/4 cup of liquid.

In a small saucepan, combine raspberry juice/water, sugar, lemon juice, and cornflour.  Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture bubbles and thickens.  Remove from heat, set aside.

With a fine wire strainer, use a spoon to press the raspberries so that the seedless pulp falls into a bowl below.  Strain enough pulp to get between 1/3 - 1/2 cup of pulp.  This is tedious work, really tedious, but it's worth it. If you are feeling especially lazy you can skip this step and just use the whole berries, but then you'll have a seedy filling and nobody likes that. 

To the cooled mixture in the saucepan, add 2 tablespoons liqueur and the raspberry pulp.  Stir well and refrigerate a few hours or overnight.   Keeps in the refrigerator for at least a week.