health food.

Once, when having some friends over, they brought cute little bread puddings in individual tins for everyone. Do you like bread pudding? I love it. I don't think I'd ever tried it until I was an adult, and as soon as I had, I looked up how to make such a delight happen in my own kitchen. I was shocked, SHOCKED, at how easy it is. You don't even have to make the bread! Bread, eggs, milk, sugar, spices, BAM. More people should be making bread pudding. It's got bread in it, so it's practically health food.

The particular bread pudding that our friends brought was extra fancy, because instead of stale store-brand sandwich bread, they'd used croissants. It was decadent, like the kind of thing that billionaires eat. It opened my mind to all the possibilities of bread pudding created by the many varieties of bread. They'd also mixed in a generous amount of chocolate chips, which turns out is the necessary ingredient to get Josh to enjoy bread pudding. I cleaned my personal tin as best as I could; since we had company, I did not lick them. I thought about it, though.

The morning after our dinner party, we found the pudding tins on the floor, which was not where we had left them. They were also completely clean of chocolate smears, which was also not how we'd left them (because of company). We'd only had the dog for a few weeks, but we knew enough to know that Remix was not supposed to eat chocolate. We thought we'd killed her with the most delicious bread pudding in the world. However, with a little googling, we found out that a dog can safely have up to 1 ounce of chocolate per five pounds of dog. So our dog could eat three-quarters of a pound of chocolate with no ill effects. Phew!

Since it did not kill my dog, I've been craving that bread pudding ever since (had it killed my dog, I would probably still have craved it, but would feel conflicted). I did not want to go out and buy a bunch of croissants just for the purpose of making the most delicious bread pudding ever. Croissants in France are cheap; croissants at Kroger are not.

Then last weekend, we were at a church yard sale where they were selling boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. There came unto me a thought. I paid $5 for a box to support their mission trip or youth group or something. Mostly it was to get the doughnuts.

I asked the Internet whether anyone had ever made doughnut bread pudding before, and the Internet said, duh, Paula Deen has. Of course she has. But she put fruit cocktail and raisins in it, which is fine, I guess, but sort of silly in a world where chocolate exists. I found another recipe that used store-bought cake doughnuts with chocolate chips. Between the two, I came up with something.

Do I need to even tell you? It was amazing. And you don't even add any sugar! Health food, I tell ya.

Krispy Kreme Doughnut Bread Pudding

1 dozen Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts, cut or torn into bite-sized pieces
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 c half and half
1 t cinnamon
1 t vanilla
pinch salt
1 1/2 c chocolate chips

Mix the chocolate chips and doughnuts in a large bowl. Mix the other ingredients in smaller bowl. Add the wet mixture to the doughnuts and let them soak it all up. Add to a buttered baking dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 35 minutes until set. Let cool, then stick face directly in and snarf it up. Or serve it on plates or whatever.

Notes:
You could maybe sub milk for the half and half. You could also possibly cut the chocolate chips to 1 cup, but I have a chocolate addict in the house. Some people make sauces to put on bread puddings, which is probably delicious, but unnecessary.