Light and Fluffy Saturday Bread Pudding

Yesterday at an office holiday party, I had a slice of bread pudding from a caterer's chafing dish and was fairly disgusted by how greasy it was. (I ate the whole thing anyway though; 'tis the season.) Seriously: why does bread pudding need a stick of butter to make it taste good? I concluded that it didn't.

Reasonably Healthy Bread Pudding

1 cup raisins
4 eggs
1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
1/2 baguette, cubed

Preheat oven to 375. Butter four ramekins. (This is the only butter in the recipe.)

Steep raisins in hot water (or tea, or rum, or other marinade of your choice) until tender. In a mixing bowl whisk together eggs, soy milk, sugar, and flavorings. Add other flavorings if you like -- maybe some cocoa or mint or coconut? When custard is smooth, dump in bread cubes, stir around until moist, then tamp down until the bread sponges up the custard. Drain the raisins and stir them into the mix.

Decant mixture into ramekins, position these in a Pyrex dish, and bake for 45-50 minutes or until custard puffs up, is set in the center, and the tips of the bread cubes are just starting to darken to chocolate brown.

Trick #1: Instead of salt, add to the custard a pinch of New Hampshire blend: maple sugar, salt and pepper.

Trick #2: Recycle the soaking liquid from other fruit you've been marinating -- I had a pot of cinnamon water in which figs had steeped overnight -- to enhance the flavor of the raisins.

Trick #3: Pull the dish of ramekins out of the oven after 20 minutes and drizzle a bit of honey over each. Pop back in the oven. Honey will both moisturize and caramelize the custard.