Bread pudding for about a third of the calories of Pioneer Woman’s heavenly dessert

It is a well-known fact in the blogosphere -- and in just about every kitchen known to humankind -- that Pioneer Woman’s bread pudding is beyond heavenly; it is positively sinful!  Kat has been known to make PDub’s bread pudding for Christmas Morning breakfast.  It is simply that good.

But.  But, but, but.

It contains approximately seventy-four billion, two hundred and sixteen calories – every single one of them deeply glorious, and almost religious.

I haven’t mentioned it here yet, but I have once again embarked on a Weight Watcher’s journey.  Somehow the fact that fresh fruits and vegetables are completely free (as in ZERO points!) has made it doable for me this time and, knock-on-wood-and-I-hope-I’m-not-speaking-too-soon, I have actually lost about 11 pounds in four weeks.  (Of course, being really, really sick for two of those weeks helped.)

So last night when we had leftover bread from a delicious raclette dinner (yes again, this time to celebrate Elisabeth and Danny’s homecoming from Costa Rica and Nicaragua – blog post on that to come), I decided that I simply couldn’t waste it and I had to make bread pudding.

But what about the seventy-four billion, two hundred and sixteen calories?  That’s about seventy-four billion, one hundred and eight-seven calories more than my daily Weight Watchers allowance! 

So I made a relatively (heavy emphasis on rel-a-tive-ly) low calorie bread pudding recipe today, and you know what?  It was actually pretty good!

Unfortunately I didn’t think to photograph my whole adventure until I had put the whole thing together, but basically here’s what I did:

I cut all the day-old bread into cubes and put them in a bowl.  There must have been about 8 cups of cubed bread.  Then I cut up two apples and tossed that in with the bread, and on top of that, I dumped about 1/2 cup of raisins.

Over all that I poured a mixture of about 1/2 cup of Splenda, mixed with maybe 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and about 3 cups of nonfat milk (and a few teaspoons of crème brulee coffee creamer that we happened to have in the fridge), which I heated and into which I melted 1/2 cube of butter. (OK, that’s the dangerous part!)  Then I mixed the bread, apple, raisins and liquid gently and poured the whole mess into a casserole dish.

In a separate bowl I combined about 1/2 cup of Eggbeaters, about a teaspoon on cinnamon, some fresh grated nutmeg, and some vanilla extract, and I poured all that over the moistened bread mixture.

Then, just because I felt like it, I added some low-sugar apricot/peach/mango fruit topping – just a few teaspoons – right to the top of the whole mess.  And this was the first time that it occurred to me to take a picture!

I baked the bread pudding at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, giving it about a minute under broil right at the end.  Yummy!

THEN TOM CAME HOME. 

And he did this:

He made a topping to pour over the (er, I mean his!) bread pudding!  I’m sure it was delicious, but I didn’t have any topping.  Remember, this is only low-calorie in comparison to Pioneer Woman’s bread pudding with whiskey sauce!  But I must say, it is well worth the slight “cheat” and only sinful enough to make me feel guilty for, like, 22 seconds.  I’m already over it.