Chocolate Chip-Cinnamon Easter Bread - 7 points

I finally did it! After bemoaning my lack of planning and time, I did sit down on Saturday morning to make my weekly menu and managed to find some easy recipes for today. But...when to shop? Well, I have the best husband in the world. Between the Happy First Birthday party and the quinceneara yesterday, Stone ran to store for me while I took a quick bath and got all dolled up. What a great guy!

As our day yesterday was rather a blur, it is appropriate that my first picture for you is a rather blurry shot of myself attempting to keep my nephew from getting a head start on the Easter egg hunt that was our first event of the day. 

I decided that I may as well make something ridiculously indulgent for Easter. Easters is supposed to be a joyous celebration, so it is a good day to share to special occasion food. Thus, I decided to go back to a pre-Weight Watchers treat that I haven't in a very long time. It is full of prepackaged food (which I do not shun on special occasions or busy days - growing up with absolutely no convenience foods makes you quite thankful for the woman who first put spaghetti sauce in a jar and the man who decided to box up some cake mix).

Second photo break...look at this little cake covered hand at the Happy First Birthday Party!

You will have to excuse me for using a little bit of slang in my description of this breakfast treat. My students  - and thus I, by exposure to them - often describe something that is extreme as being "on crack". So, for example, fried green tomatoes from Miller's Grocery are like tomatoes on crack.  Chocolate Chip-Cinnamon Easter Bread is like the middle of a cinnamon roll on crack. You know...the part of the cinnamon roll that you eat the whole rest of the roll just to get to? The gooey, sweet, cinnamon center. That is what this is, except it is even better.

Chocolate Chip-Cinnamon Easter Bread - from Pillsbury Annual Recipes 2008
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cans refrigerated cinnamon rolls with icing
1 box vanilla pudding and pie filling mix (not instant according to the recipe - I used instant and it was fine)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

1. Use 1 tbsp butter to grease a bundt pan. Melt remaining butter in microwave (or over the stove if you are trying not to wake your sleeping spouse).
2. Separate roll dough into 16 rolls. Cut each roll in half crosswise. Place half of the roll pieces in the pan. (If you are like me, this will not look like enough to constitute a bottom layer. Trust me, it is.)
3. Over the rolls in the pan pour half of the pudding mix, half of the brown sugar, and half of the melted butter. Repeat layers; top with chocolate chips.
4. Bake 25 minutes at 375F. Cool for 2 minutes before inverting the pan to remove the ring to a plate. Top immediately with icing. (The recipe says to wait 15 minutes. The recipe is wrong). Serve immediately.
5. Yields 16, 7 point servings

With that much sugar and that much fat, how could it not taste delicious?

I would love to end with a picture from the event that ended our blur of a Saturday - the quinceneara. Alas, I have no pictures that do not show multiple faces of other peoples' children. As I did not ask their permission to post those pictures, I will leave it up to you to imagine a girl in a beautiful pink dress celebrating young womanhood...tier upon tier of chocolate cake...smiling faces...and me, in a pale blue dress, dancing with my handsome husband.