November 4, 2018

Berrylicious French Toast

I made this with gluten-free brioche rolls – so this is gluten-free – but use whatever type of brioche suits you.

deep-dish-french-toast — More like bread pudding than what I think of as French toast.

The French toast I had as a child was bread which was fried after being dipped in an egg and milk mixture – and sometimes just egg because most of us didn’t like milk. It was alright. I wasn’t enthusiastic about it but I never refused it either.

And then over the last decade or so I’d see some US cooking show where they’d make French toast and it looked like a dessert. Nothing even remotely like the simple – and savoury – French toast I knew.

So as the holidays are approaching I wanted to add some special “festive” kind of breakfast to twimii and I thought why not try American-style French toast?

Two recipes in particular caught my eye Baked Apricot French Toast with Crunchy Corn Flake Streusel from Fine Cooking and Triple Berry Brioche French Toast Bake from Table for Two. I really wanted to try the apricot one, especially with all the thoughts of Buchteln in my head. But I already have a great apricot and bread baked dish on the site…

Another thing I liked about the apricot dish is that many of the ingredients are cupboard items – as in they stay good in the cupboard until you’re ready to use them.

The berry dish does sound gorgeous. But it also sounds very summery – well, to me. I wanted something more warming and gooey and a little spicy. Also I wanted most of the ingredients to be cupboard (or freezer) items.

So that’s how I came up with Berrylicious French Toast.

ingredients for berrylicious deep dish french toast — Brioche rolls, eggs, milk, vanilla bean paste, frozen strawberries, frozen raspberries, tinned cherries, golden syrup, lemon juice, ginger, cinnamon and sugar.

Berrylicious French Toast

Serves 4

Berrylicious French Toast

Ingredients

6 brioche rolls - 300g of brioche, sliced
1 425g tin of cherries in syrup
125g frozen strawberries
125g frozen raspberries
lemon juice
2 inches ginger root, peeled and finely grated
golden syrup
300ml whole milk
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
sugar for sprinkling
ground cinnamon
chocolate optional, for serving

Instructions

Empty the tin of cherries into a saucepan. Heat on a moderate setting. Add the strawberries and raspberries and stir occasionally until they have thawed out completely. Add some lemon juice to make the syrup sharper. I added about 1 teaspoon. Add in the ginger. To make the syrup properly sweet, but not cloyingly so, add in golden syrup to taste. I added about 1 generous teaspoon. Increase the heat the bring to the boil for a couple of minutes until the syrup has thickened just a little. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
In a bowl whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla bean paste. The vanilla should really sing out - if it doesn't add in a little more.
Grease a deep oven dish that will hold the ingredients snugly with butter.
Add half the brioche slices to the bottom of the dish.
Spoon three-quarters of the berry compote over the bread and reserve the rest of the berry mix in a bowl for serving.
Layer the rest of the slices over the berry compote and pour the custard mix over the bread. Push things down so that everything is likely to soak up the eggy-milk.
Cover with foil and leave in the fridge overnight.
In the morning heat the oven to 180 C. Remove the foil. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the dish and bake for an hour.
Take out when it's time. Cover with a tea towel and allow to cool for about an hour.
Serve with a spoonful of the reserved berry compote and a sprinkle of grated chocolate. Enjoy!

Notes

I used the gluten-free Schar Sweet Brioche Rolls for this recipe.

http://twimii.com/recipes/berrylicious-french-toast/