Raspberry frangipani cake

This is a Thermomix version of a couple of recipes pulled out of magazines or library books - I think it is pretty well perfect. Deliciously perfect anyway

Place 200 g white sugar and the rind of 2 lemons in the Thermomix grind 5 seconds at speed 10. I take the rind off using a vegetable peeler.

Add 200 g unsalted butter (I use the groovy Western Star 100g portions) cut into cubes
Blend 30 seconds at speed 5
Add 4 eggs one at a time blend 5 seconds at speed 5 after each egg is added

Scrape down the sides, add 200 g almond meal and 30 g cornflour blend 20 seconds speed 5
Scrape down the sides again and blend 20 secs at speed 5

Pour into a wide shallow dish - I use the Chef's Toolbox pie mold which sadly appears to be discontinued - the slice tin would do the trick...

Then decorate the top with sixteen raspberries - I just use frozen ones

And bake at 175 for about 25-30 minutes till just starting to brown around the edges

Turn out and leave to cool - I turned it out by using two plates and flipping it quickly.

This is great with yoghurt cream...
To make yoghurt cream just whip cream and then fold through an equal quantity of yoghurt

last night we had it with Weight Watchers Raspberry Dessert Sauce which is seriously yum! Serves 12

9 ProPoints per serve and worth every mouthful!

Freeform apple tart

This recipe started when Taff wanted to buy a chunky Kit Kat at the stupid market. Just let me check the points on my trusty WW app says I. Eleven! Eleven points on a Nestle product. That means we would compromise our budget, ethical stance and WW goal. "I am sure we can do better than that" says moi (secretly aware of Taff's fetish for all things involving cooked apple)

So we armed ourselves with a packet of short crust pastry and came home to create

First rule of weight reduction dishes involving pastry:
 You don't actually need pastry on the top and the bottom!


This halves the buttery goodness while still satisfying the pastry craving.

So I put that pastry sheet in the bottom of a pyrex pie dish and peeled and sliced four granny smith apples. I like apples that hold their shape once they are cooked and red apples generally go to mush, so I used Granny Smith apples.

Then I wanted some sweetness and spice so I sprinkled on 30 mls of real maple syrup (not the pretend stuff) and 4 teaspoons of dark brown sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves and 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon.

At this point I considered trimming the pastry to make a neat tart, nut as I had already added up all the ingredients on the Weight Watchers recipe builder and found that this would only be 6 ProPoints a serve I figured we could enjoy ALL the pastry not lose some of it to trimming.
So at this point it became a free form tart - just fold or push the pastry in until it looks like this:

I put it in the oven at 160 deg for about an hour. It didn't over brown but the apples weren't cooked as much as I would have liked - I am glad they were slices not chunks. So I blitzed it in the microwave for 2 minutes which did the trick.
Here is the finished product

Next time I think I will blitz the apples for 2 minutes before filling the case, and toss in the filling rather than sprinkling it on top. But apart from that - add a dollop of good quality Greek yoghurt and dig in!

Dessert!

We had strawberries and Salted Caramel sauce. No idea how many points but it was heavenly and at least one serve of fruit.

Details of the sauce here

What else do you suggest we do with it?