Cinnamon Toast French Toast

I love the convenience of baked french toast but I find that too many recipes are more like bread pudding. This one isn’t and also has the added appeal of tasting like cinnamon toast: a melding of 2 delicious breakfast foods.

The first step is to make the cinnamon toast. I found that 450F was much too high a temperature for toasting the bread evenly; the bottoms were nicely toasted after only 5 minutes but the tops had not yet caramelized so I put them under the broiler. In my oven, 350-375 would have been a better toasting temperature.

I assembled the dish the night before and I think it benefited from this as it allowed the bread to absorb most of the egg mixture. Baking time was ~10 minutes longer - to be expected coming straight from the fridge.

I made a few changes to the recipe:

• replaced white with whole wheat bread
• omitted the butter on the bread ……the cinnamon topping caramelizes in the oven so stays put without it
• used 1% milk instead of full fat

I enjoyed it plain as it had enough flavour/sweetness to stand on its own but others enjoyed it with Greek yogurt and maple syrup.

Mother's Day breakfast (a day early) made by my 14 year old son.

I found this version of baked french toast better than others we've tried. The toasting of the bread meant that there were nice crisp edges and a custardy under layer. Most of the work can be done the night before which makes breakfast come together very quickly the next morning. In the time it takes to bake the french toast, one can fry up an entire pound of bacon.

Served with a side of crispy bacon, this was a wonderful Mother's Day breakfast.