French Toast. And amped-up French Toast.

So, there's this global pandemic going on right now. Have you heard?

Yeah, can't miss it. Or ...... you should try to miss it. Wear a mask, and wash your hands.

I don't know what your strategy is to get through it, but as for me and my house .... we've been doing a lot of cooking and baking! And, since one goal is to educate Miss Emma on how to cook, it naturally followed that she could learn the basics.

This last week, she learned about French Toast:

It was her idea -- she loves French Toast. I think she actually loves the idea of sifting powdered sugar over it, right before consuming. She also loves the idea of sprinkling a few drops of water onto the griddle to see if it's hot enough.  (If the griddle is hot, water drops will boil instantly, and "dance" on the surface before evaporating. If it's not hot yet, they sit and slowly sizzle.)

So, this is a basic recipe I keep in the back of my head, but it has its roots in the recipe from the old red-and-white-checkerboard Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. Here's a quick run-down:


For each person you're serving, you need 1 egg.
For each egg, you need 1/4 cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of sugar, about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. More on that in a moment.


We always use the same bread we keep on hand all the time .... it's a cracked wheat bread. But you use whatever you've got.  If your bread is starting to go stale, all the better. Once, we had some friends come from the Tri-Cities and stay the weekend with us, their kids would play with our kids and we've been friends since college. So in the morning, we fixed them French Toast. I don't know what they were used to getting, but they proclaimed this stuff the best they'd ever had!

So -- mix all ingredients with a whisk or mixer, in a wide bowl. If you're doing a lot, mix the eggs first before adding the milk. (It helps make sure you really kid get all the yolks mixed in.) Dip each side of the bread into the egg mixture, and cook on a lightly greased, medium-high griddle until nicely browned, flipping once. Serve with your favorite maple pancake syrup, and don't forget to sift powdered sugar over the top, so it looks pretty.

Here's what I have learned over the years:

- Vanilla makes a big difference. Go figure!

- We used to use butter heavily on the griddle (or frying pan), and give it a very buttery flavor. (Maybe that's what our friends liked??) This is very good, but lately I just lightly oil the griddle with a paper towel and move on. If Todd is cooking, he uses the butter by ripping one end of the wrapper off a stick, and then rubbing the griddle down with the stick of butter, holding the stick by the part still wrapped in the wrapper.

- Cinnamon doesn't play well with others, and doesn't like to mix in evenly.  Sometimes you end up with cinnamon sticking to the bowl and not the bread. My trick to fix that is to forget straight cinnamon, and use cinnamon-sugar in place of regular sugar. Works like a charm! If you're making a lot, you might need to add more cinnamon after the first couple batches have picked up the cinnamon that was floating on the surface of the egg mixture.

- After the milk, I've stopped measuring. A couple splashes of vanilla, and tossing cinnamon-sugar over the top, and it all works fine.

- If you're making a big batch, keep 'em warm in the oven to serve at once

- Emma is learning not to leave the bread soaking too long ..... hello, mush!



So, a couple years ago, I went to church Girls' Camp and learned a thing or two.

First, a-p-p-a-r-e-n-t-l-y other people don't use cinnamon. What???  Well, our head cook wasn't expecting it. After a short discussion, he decided (and I agreed) to do 2 different batches of French Toast that morning: one WITH and one WITHOUT cinnamon. Then see what the mob preferred.

Turns out, they prefer cinnamon. I tried really hard not to wear a smug smile on my face after that.

Second, ....also from that same head cook, I came away with an amazing idea to amp up my French Toast game. Instead of using regular, run-of-the-mill bread (see what I did there? Ha!), ..... go to the store and buy French Bread, un-sliced.  Not just because it's also French, either ... there's a real reason here.

So this is Stuffed French Toast. You slice the bread yourself, but make each slice double thick. Like about an inch-and-a-half or so thick. It should be like two regular bread slices thick. Then you slice a slit in it, through the side of the crust, to make a pocket.

In a bowl, mix together equal parts raspberry jam, cream cheese, and powdered sugar. Schmear that gorgeous pink mixture into the pocket which you cut into each slice of bread. Continue as usual to make the French Toast, but since you have super-thick bread, you need to dip it longer, so it can absorb more egg. (This will probably throw off my rule-of-thumb of eggs vs. number of eaters. Plan on more eggs.) Cook it as usual.

That, my friends, is a breakfast that dreams are made of!!

Also -- since it was at Camp, there are always do-ahead shortcuts: Like slicing the bread the night before. And even stuffing it the night before, too. Ok, but if you stuff it the night before, you have to refrigerate it. So just slice and slit the bread, make the raspberry mixture, (put it in the fridge) and stuff them in the morning. Stack the bread on humongous Camp-size baking sheets (or just your regular ones), and cover with plastic wrap until morning.

I haven't tried Stuffed French Toast at home .... mostly because that would involve actually planning a breakfast farther in advance than just the night before, and buying French bread specifically for that purpose. And I'm just usually not that organized.

Although -- it sounds like a great idea for taking on our family camping trip next month!!

hmmmm........