Breakfast Bread Pudding and Sinfully Delicious Cheesecake

I stopped by Brandi’s blog yesterday morning and saw she had made a breakfast bread pudding for her husband’s weekday birthday.  I needed one other dish to bring to our office birthday breakfast and it sounded delicious.  But this is going to be one of those recipes that inspired me, as you will see my changes below:

Vanilla Maple Breakfast Bread Pudding

Makes: 9 servings  (my version comes in at 5 PointsPlus per serving)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar (I reduced the brown sugar to 1/4 cup)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp maple syrup (I used butter pecan syrup)
• 6 slices bread, torn or diced into bite size pieces (I used 8 ounces of stale Italian bagette)
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup heavy cream (I used 1.5 cups of fat free half and half for the heavy cream/milk mixture)
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla bean or vanilla extract)
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar for the top (I added this)

Directions:

1. Put brown sugar, butter, and maple syrup in the bottom of an 8×8 baking dish.
2. Heat in the microwave 30 seconds to 1 minutes or until the butter is melted and the sugar starts to dissolve. Stir the mixture together until all the sugar is mixed with the syrup and butter.
3. Put the diced or torn bread on top of the sugar mixture in the baking dish.
4. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs.
5. Whisk the cream, milk, vanilla, and salt into the eggs.
6. Pour the cream mixture over the bread but do not stir!
7. Press the top of the bread mixture into the cream to get every piece to soak in some of the cream mixture.
8. Cover the dish with foil and let it sit, overnight, in the fridge.
9. In the morning, preheat oven to 375 degrees.
10. Bake, covered for 25 minutes. Remove the foil, add the tablespoon of brown sugar on top and broil another 5-10 minutes on low so its nice and browned.

Holy shizz – I had 1/3 cup of this and it was delicious – the top is crunchy, yet the inside is so tender because of the overnight soak in the custard mixture.  How bad can brown sugar and butter be?

And while I made a broccoli version of my crustless cauliflower quiche, I had a half a jalapeno bagel left over from yesterdays birthday breakfast, 1/2 cup egg white and spinach sammie with 1/2 ounce of swiss cheese.  All together, breakfast comes in at 10 PointsPlus – with fresh blueberries and strawberries on the side.

I went on an 8 mile bike ride at lunch – the weather again was perfect – partly cloudy, around 71 degrees.   I almost wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it in – I had a work project that lasted until 1:30.  My boss gave me the option to either take a late lunch, or leave an hour early today, and I chose to bike – again, who am I?!

I’ve yet made another version of tomato soup – this one may be the quickest one yet!

Quickest Tomato Soup Ever

• 1.5 cups is 4 PointsPlus

Ingredients

• One 28 ounce can of tomatoes, with juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon parsley (or Italian sesoning)
• 1 teaspoon tabasco
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 4 slices (8 oz.) rye bread (or any stale bread)

Dump everything into a stock pot, making sure to press the bread into the tomato mixture.  Heat over medium heat for 15 minutes.  I put it on the stove, took a shower, got dressed, did my make up, then removed from the heat and using a stick blender, pureed it – the bread makes it thick and creamy without adding heavy cream.

Dinner was another easy one – burgers and yucca chips.  But not just any burger – a thai peanut burger inspired by Nicole from Prevention RD.   I took her recipe and scaled it down by 1/8th for my burger – Tony wouldn’t touch these burgers with a 10 foot pole. 😀  Although my burger was 4 ounces to start raw, 3 ounces when cooked.

• 4 ounces ground sirloin
• 2 tablespoons finely diced carrot
• splash of sesame oil
• 1/2 teaspoon chili garlic sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon jalapeno peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro
• pinch of salt and pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

For the sauce:

• 1/2 teaspoon olive oil mayo
• 1 tablespoons diced cilantro
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic chili sauce

  

Sadly, I deleted the final product. 🙁  

Wow – thanks for this recipe Nicole – such a spicy kick and I loved the texture of the carrots in the burger and the zing of the fresh ginger.  Yum!

Stats for Thursday

• ??______ points
• 8 mile bike ride at lunch
• average blood sugar 189 (oops – that was from the super sugary bread pudding I had WITH the fresh fruit – I bit too many carbs at breakfast, but I had plenty of fuel for my bike ride!) 😀

Happy Friday – check back tomorrow for my WI – I am not even worried about my 10% because I know its mine – its the power of positive thinking, right?!

 And now the recipe you’ve all been waiting for. . . the best cheesecake ever!

Here is my friend Cassie’s recipe – sounds like it could have been written by me – especially the last sentence when she tried to use reduced fat cream cheese. 😀

New York Style Cheesecake

Filling-

• 4 8oz. pkg. cream cheese* (room temperature)
• 1 c. sour cream* (room temperature)
• 2 eggs (room temperature, lightly beaten)
• 1 3/4 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 Tbs. cornstarch

Crust-

• 1 1/2 c. graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 c. sugar
• 4 Tbs. butter (melted)

Mix crust ingredients and press into a 9-in. springform pan that has been sprayed really well with Pam, bottom and sides. The crust should come about halfway up the sides of the pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 min.; remove from oven and reduce oven temp. to 300 degrees.

Make sure cream cheese, sour cream, and eggs are room temp. To mix the filling, start with cream cheese and beat the hell out of it, then add sour cream beat the hell out of it some more, scraping the sides of the mixing bowl every few minutes.  Gradually add sugar, then eggs. You want the filling to be really smooth without any chunks. Add vanilla and cornstarch. Pour into cooled crust and bake at 300 degrees for 50-55 min., then turn off oven and leave cheesecake in the oven without opening the door for 3 hours. If the cheesecake cools too quickly it will crack. Freeze overnight. The next day use a knife dipped in hot water and loosen the edges of the springform pan; transfer to a platter. With the cheesecake frozen it’s much easier to cut without tearing it up. Individual slices will thaw in just a few minutes.

*I use full-fat ingredients; I tried making a cheesecake with fat-free sour cream and neufac…neufasch…1/3-less-fat cream cheese, and it was all spongy and tasted like ass.  (this is the sentence that could have been written by me!)

THANKS CASSIE!  If you make this, let me know how it turns out for you!