Pins-Day Post: broiled grapefruit

I think I'm going to try to post something each Wednesday that I've tried from Pinterest.  I'm not a big recipe girl, but it might be a recipe, or a craft, or some other wonderful fabulous thing.  You never know with me.

I've seen pins recently touting the sweet goodness of broiled grapefruit.  Have you seen that one?  Of course, on the pin's description, there is no indication that you do anything but slap the grapefruit under the broiler, and voila!  Ahhh, not so.  Clicking on the link reveals the whole story.  The recipe I saw pinned calls for 2 Tbsp of butter and 2 Tbsp of brown sugar, which turns a 0 Points+ fruit into a 6 Points+ piece of fruit.  I have to admit, I was rather disappointed.

I decided to see if there was something I could do to still achieve the sweet, caramelized effect without losing so many points on what could otherwise be a "free" snack.  I never have honest-to-goodness butter in the house, so I used Country Crock.  I tried 2 tsp of margarine and 2 tsp of brown sugar, and kind of smashed them together on a small plate to mix them.  I sliced the grapefruit in half, ran the knife through the sections a little bit so that the margarine and brown sugar could seep down into it, and put it in a broiler safe pan.  Spread the pasty mix on the grapefruit halves.

I placed the pan under the broiler as close to the flame as I could get it.  The instructions online said to broil for 4-6 minutes.  I safely chose the 4 minute window, because my grapefruit was starting to get a little toasty.  It smelled a little like citrusy roasted marshmallows.

With my adjustments to the recipe, the whole prepared grapefruit is 4 Points+.  Half of the prepared grapefruit would be 2 Points+.  I did eat the whole thing, but in the future I'm not sure that I'm willing to lose that many points on a snack like that.

In the end, it was a delicious twist on an otherwise bitter and tart fruit.  The brown sugary caramel treatment to the top of the grapefruit was really yummy, and it melted down into the fruit nicely.  It does not take all of the bitterness out of the grapefruit, but does make it more palatable to this girl that's not a HUGE grapefruit fan.  I could possibly try it again with only 1 tsp of each of the margarine and brown sugar and see if that makes a significant difference.  It would be worth revisiting for sure.