Food & Entertaining
April 23, 2014

Back to Breakfast: Blueberry baked French toast

This is another one of those make-ahead deals so fix it the night before and break­fast is a cake walk.

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We’re back with our Sweet Potato Chronicles friends, Ceri and Laura, authors of the phenomenal cookbook, How to Feed a Family. To start 2014 off right, we’re getting Back to Breakfast! These healthy, delicious recipes will be loved by the whole family. Next up: Blueberry baked French toast!

We love breakfast. Break­fast any time of day and for any meal of the day. Like Ceri can con­sume eggs, I can wolf back pan­cakes at any hour (the 3am hour is espe­cially nasty to wit­ness) and a close sec­ond to pan­cakes is my other beloved breakfast–French toast. Since I’m pretty much known around these parts (by parts I mean the square footage of my kitchen) for bak­ing a mean French toast, I took the lib­erty to put together another pan of my break­fast bril­liance. It’s actu­ally mod­elled after my favourite home­made blue­berry pie–mixing the blue­berry flavour com­pli­ments of all­spice and lemon.

This is another one of those make-ahead deals so fix it the night before and break­fast is a cake walk. You’ll also have left­overs for the next morn­ing if you can keep from eat­ing three por­tions of this deli­cious bake. (Good luck hav­ing leftovers.) I used brioche bread for this par­tic­u­lar ver­sion (great for enter­tain­ing or brunch) but, to make it more of a Wednes­day morn­ing deal, you can use a loaf of what­ever bread you’ve got kick­ing around. Also, feel free to take down the amount of sugar you use, a 1/4 cup does just fine too, espe­cially if you’re plan­ning on show­er­ing this baby with maple syrup.~Laura Keogh

cover150Blueberry baked French toast

Ingredients:

  • 1 loaf of brioche, cut into 1 inch cubes
  • 8 eggs
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 2 tea­spoons freshly grated lemon peel
  • 1/8 tea­spoon all­spice
  • 1/8 tea­spoon cin­na­mon
  • 1/8 tea­spoon salt
  • 2 cups fresh blue­ber­ries
  • 1 tsp but­ter, for greas­ing the dish

Method:

Grease a 9×13 inch casse­role dish. Slice your brioche into 1-inch cubes and place in the dish.

In a large mix­ing bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, sugar, lemon zest, all­spice, cin­na­mon and salt. Pour this mix­ture over the bread. Gen­tly stir the bread cubes and the egg mix­ture in the dish, mak­ing sure to press the bread down so it is coated in the egg. Then stir in the blue­ber­ries so they are scat­tered through­out the dish. Cover with plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate overnight.

Remove the dish from the refrig­er­a­tor and allow it to rest for a few min­utes. Pre­heat the oven to 350F.

Place the dish in the cen­tre of the oven to bake to bake for 35 to 40 min­utes, until the bread is lightly browned and the eggy mix­ture is bubbling.

Slice and serve with warm maple syrup or agave nec­tar or even yogurt.

For more amazing recipes from Sweet Potato Chronicles, visit our special Cityline.ca section. And of course head on over to their site for tons of amazing recipes and ideas!

Photo credit Maya Visnyei 

http://www.mayavisnyei.com/

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