Crockpot Apple Bread Pudding (Oven Free Cooking)

This is a great way to use up a lot of things at once that otherwise may not be eaten, and it makes a perfect sweet dessert or breakfast. True comfort food, while being thrifty too!
The other night I was chatting with my friend who used to be one of our many room mates. She became pregnant(this seems to be a curse on me, that any female I live with will have happen within a year or two. I'm not kidding, even warn them first but they don't believe it. The last two swore it could never happen to them, now they have many babies.) and moved away to have her daughter.
I mentioned really wishing we could share some of all this cabbage, potatoes, breads, and desserts with her now. I keep cooking up a storm, but it's just the two of us now.

She was all like "Oh, I'd be all over the veggies, but I'm not doing bread and sugar anymore"

I was already in the middle of having described my fave muffins, and these carrot cake mini bundt cakes that were amazing though. She also loves carrot cake.

"I can cheat a little. I do have a pint of Rocky Road ice cream.. hang on." Then she actually sent me a picture, it was even Blue Bell. Evil! Evil Woman!


Then I told her about these healthy blondies and how I planned to make an apple bread pudding with those and the french toast bread added in.

I left out the part about those blondies tasting so healthy nobody would want to eat them how they were(like an unsweetened granola bar and bran muffin combined) I took one bite and knew that. Then I tricked Hubby into trying one bite and he acted like a toddler about it, making a scene for the next 15 minutes trying to get the taste out of his mouth and pouting that I could be so mean to him like that.

But when I described my planned recipe she REALLY wanted to try that one out then, it sounded amazing.
Heh.

Wait, I thought you didn't do bread and sugar anymore.. :P

Apparantly this would be worth it. And boy, was it. Came out even better than I hoped!


First, I gathered up all of the bits of smushed bread loaves and such that needed to be used up. We had a few ends of plain white ones, about 8 slices of wheat, then 12 or so slices of the french toast bread(cinnamon raisin works well too) and 3-4 apples. After getting started I decided to throw in some apple sauce cups that needed to be used up too.

Though this next part isn't really needed to make the bread pudding work(it simply adds a little extra texture and flavour) you can skip it and just put everything straight into the crockpot, or it could be done in a saute pan if wanted.


Since this was actually the day after I finally had an oven again, I did use it to toast the bread pieces after slicing them into cubes. Simple step: just bake until crispy but not burned on a cookie sheet ..or my Black Betty cast iron griddle. :)

If you still have extra bread to use up, now would be a great time to multi task and turn them into croutons for salads. You can spice them up and toss it all in some good healthy oil too before baking. Yum!

While all that's toasted, slice up the apples and start layering it into the crockpot. First layer of butter slices, apples, brown sugar/cinnamon. Second layer of bread crumbles. I did one batch of white with the blondies broken in, then applesauce and more apples. Topped it with the wheat and french toast breads and more butter.


So simple! After that all you need to do is mix up 4 eggs and 2 cups of milk with some sugar and vanilla. Err sorry I didn't really measure the sugar because we don't like stuff super sweet. For a full crockpot I guess maybe half a cup? Do it to your taste.

Pour the mixture over the layers of bread as evenly as you can, then just put the lid on and leave it to cook on low for three to four hours or so. It will puff up on the top a lot, then you need to turn it off(take the crockpot pan out to cool faster if possible) and let it set for at least 30 minutes.

When it cools down, the top will sink in again, don't worry it's supposed to. Spoon it up into a bowl, top off with ice cream or whip cream, and dig in.

It was really shocking to me how those blondies came out so amazing, they really stole the whole show and made it the best part. Because they were made with coffee flour which the label screamed positive things about, it just MELTED into the mix and made it taste so rich and yummy. Plus because they were an "everything" flavor containing nuts and fruit, it gave that extra texture explosion too.


I'm thinking there might actually have been chocolate chips in there too... you never tasted it until after it did the whole melting down thing. But I really love using coffee whenever I bake anything with chocolate(It's seriously the only reason we ever have coffee on hand in our kitchen, especially the instant kind) so that may be why I fell in love with this so much.
So the "EWW Too Healthy" bit turned into such delish bliss! YUM!

Thanks for reading! Trying to remember to use the logo Papa Pepper was nice enough to make for me. :)