Lemon and Raspberries

"Oh, this is soooo hard!" moans my child.  She is scraping raspberry seeds back and forth over a sieve, to push as much pulp as possible out the other side.  "All the seeds still have some goo on them!  It takes forever!"

I love the taste of raspberries, but I do not enjoy the seeds.  At all.  Rob had been the chief raspberry seed remover in the family, but the kids are growing older and acquiring more responsibilities, right?

I make raspberry sauce a lot, since we have a patch in our back yard which is reasonably prolific.  Once the seeds are removed, it's a simple matter to throw in some lemon juice, sugar and cornstarch to make a lovely, bright tasting sauce.  The lemon juice is key.  The extra acid wakes up the flavour.  As usual I eyeball the ingredient amounts, and often don't even bother to taste the product until serving.  It somehow comes out right with very little adjustment.  The cornstarch is important to the feel in the mouth.  Sometimes, I want it thicker or thinner so I add accordingly. 

Once the sauce is cooked to my desires, I pour it into jam jars and cap it hot.  Then I let it cool to room temperature and put it in the fridge.  Note, I am NOT preserving it this way.  I just find the skin that forms on top is less evident if I cover it warm.  The best way to prevent 'cornstarch skin' on a sauce or custard is to put plastic film directly on top while hot, but I can't be bothered for jars of sauce.

What to put it on?  Tonight, it was a tangy lemon tart.  I made a butter shortbread crust baked in the oven for 15 minutes and pushed down to cool, so it was good and firm.  Then poured in the lemon filling (make it from scratch, it's worth it). 

The trick when having lemon tart with raspberry sauce is to make sure it's not too sweet.  This is really difficult when trying to balance sweet with sour.  The best way to smooth out the conflict is to use a dab of whipping cream served with the two.  Refrigerating the tart also helps, which I didn't do tonight, so it was a bit on the sweet side for me but the sour was perfect.

As an aside, when one must juice so many lemons, it's hard to see all that zest go to waste.  There were the extra egg whites too, from the filling.  Rob will tell you I hate to leave excess ingredients around.  So somehow, this morphed into a lemon poppy seed snacking cake which had beaten egg whites, with a combination of all purpose and cake flours to lighten it further.  I crossed a snack cake recipe with a chiffon cake, because I didn't have enough yolks for a balanced chiffon, and I didn't feel like making a sponge cake.  We will see how it turns out when we get around to tasting it.