(not my) recipe: baked french toast

waiting for vicadin prescription, we jerry-rigged an ice pack with ice from the coffee vendor lady (she charged 25 cents!), inside the reusable shopping bag I keep in my purse

Last Friday I had the great joy of having all four of my wisdom teeth forcibly removed from my face. Since I opted for just local anesthesia, I got to be awake for the whole thing and hear the grinding tear as the top ones were ripped from my jaw. AWESOME. not really. But I’m pretty much recovered now! Just dealing with the weirdness of some of my chompers not being there when I try to chew things.

Friday and Saturday I basically ate 5 things on rotation: grits, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, pudding, ice cream (repeat). By Sunday I was off the vicadin, and feeling dangerous. We had bacon and I was going to eat some. I also had this recipe I was gonna make, no matter what. Having made it and eaten it, I have just one question.

smitten kitchen, where have you been all my life?

I know you’ve been there for quite some time, and I just ignored you. The recommendations just kept mounting, and I resisted, but recently I finally checked you out. And now I’m really really mad at myself for not giving you the googly eyes before this. We should really be best friends by now.

Anyway, this baked french toast is exactly as delicious as it looks and sounds. And I didn’t even make it boozy, I just used 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and 1 tsp lemon zest. And instead of 3 cups whole milk, I used 2 2/3 c. 1% milk, plus 1/3 c. light cream, because I didn’t have whole milk but wanted to be a little decadent. AND IT WAS AMAZING OK.

I also made a delicious raspberry sauce to go with it (which I found somewhere online but I shamefully have no idea where, sorry!), and honestly, it was a little too much. This french toast doesn’t even need syrup.

But here’s the raspberry sauce recipe, if you want it:

• 1 cup frozen raspberries
• 1 1/2 tbls sugar
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• ~ 2 tbls water

Add ’em all together in a small sauce pan on medium heat, stir until berries melt down and warm up into a delicious sauce (about 10 mins I think).

do you hear the angels singing..?

Oh. I almost forgot to mention. Always a good idea to read through a recipe thoroughly before setting out to make it. I read the part of the narrative where she says it’s great making it a day in advance blah blah blah.. But I didn’t think you had to. Fast forward to me, hungry at 11am, pouring the milky-eggy-flavory mixture over the bread in the casserole dish, reading the next step: wrap tightly in plastic wrap and store in the fridge overnight. So the bread soaks up the goodness. DUH. I let it sit in the fridge for half an hour, and by then most of it had soaked up, and I just sort of spooned some of the remaining liquid over the top pieces.. and went with it. The top layer did not get as soaked through, it got browned before the bottom layer was cooked, so we actually ate the top layer and then put the rest back in the oven. So the above picture isn’t even what it’s supposed to look like. But it was still amazingly delicious. Do it right and it’ll be fine! Also – leftovers can be eaten cold straight out of the fridge, and will still knock your socks off.