Boston Creme Pie, plus a bit of a rant as a bonus.

Key Lime Pie is the official state pie of Florida. The state meat of Virginia is Virginia Ham. Utah's state snack food is Jello, the fruit of Idaho is a Huckleberry, and Grits are the official prepared food of Georgia.

And the Boston Creme Pie is the official dessert of Massachusetts. Just in case you're interested.

I think that unless you have very sturdy pastry cream, you should never attempt to make a three layer Boston Creme Pie, as it is very unstable and all the pastry cream squeezes out. This week I have had made two very ugly cakes with pastry cream filling, and I think I'm going to shelf that filling for a while.

I used a pastry cream recipe that used flour instead of cornstarch as a thickener, and I truly think that in the case of cakes, cornstarch is absolutely necessary.

See my squashed out creme pie below. We should probably rename it yellow cake with chocolate icing so as not to deceive people.

I made Cakelove's yellow cake with the same dark chocolate Martha frosting from the Chocolate Raspberry Cake, with chocolate ganache and pastry cream, but as I said before, CORNSTARCH is KEY.

It was a nightmare, really. I had to dump loads more chocolate all over the cake at the restaurant to try to redeem its looks because the whole thing became a chocolate mud slide on the drive over. And for the rest of the night, I was a chocolate mess. There was chocolate hiding everywhere I tried to lean for the whole of my shift, smears and blotches of chocolate kept turning up all over my apron, shirt, face, pants. I almost used up the tide pen and the chocolate kept on coming.

This whole situation was exacerbated by my much loved jeep's obnoxious cry for attention. Yes, it has been making a chirp-chirping noise for several weeks, but I intended to get it checked out very soon. Any day now, I promise.

My car was through being patient, though. As I pulled into the neighborhood where I work, I noticed some smoke slipping out of the hood, and by the time I pulled up next to the restaurant (30 min late, might I add), there was white smoke (steam, I guess) POURING from every crack and crevice of the front portion of my car.

As curious coworkers and customers crowded in the restaurant windows to get a better look, I grabbed a cake from the back and noticed that GOBS of antifreeze were gushing from my car and forming a RIVER in the street.

There was nothing I could do about it, of course, so the rest of the evening was spent hitching up my apron to hide the chocolate on my shirt and nodding when every man at the restaurant offered his diagnosis of my obvious car problems.

It was bittersweet when my loving husband came to pick me up at the end of the night. I was thrilled to see him, but I couldn't help but stare sadly as we pulled away, leaving my still, silent jeep all alone.