Hey everyone, Sam here from Sugar Spun Run and today I'll be showing you how to make French Toast Casserole.
Today's French Toast Casserole
Recipe is really easy to make. This is a great breakfast option and I'll be including tips for you to make it the day before
if you don't want to be scrambling to make breakfast the day of a big holiday.
To get started, if you're making this the same day, you'll want to pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Next you're going to need about a 14 ounce
loaf of challah bread.
What we're going to do is we'll cut this into about 1 inch sized pieces and we'll put those pieces in a 13 by 9
baking dish. Make sure your baking dish has been lightly greased or buttered before you add your pieces of bread. Now if you are making
this French Toast Casserole in advance,
if you want to have it sitting in the fridge and ready to bake the next morning,
then you want this loaf of bread to be a little bit stale.
What I recommend is taking it out of the wrapper at least the day before you plan to bake. Having a slightly stale bread is
going to keep this from getting too soggy in the fridge.
Now if you're making it and plan on baking it right away, you can skip that step, we can use a fresher loaf of bread.
Now that we have our bread prepped and set aside in our 9 by 13 pan. Our oven should be preheated to
375 degrees Fahrenheit, and now you're going to need a separate large bowl.
We're going to add 4 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter to our bowl, and
we are also going to add just a quarter cup of maple syrup.
This is really going to help give this custard a really good flavor, and
a tablespoon of vanilla extract, one and a half teaspoons of ground cinnamon, and
3/4 teaspoon of salt, and now you'll want to use a whisk to just whisk these ingredients together until they're nicely combined.
We'll also add 1/4 cup each of granulated sugar, and
tightly-packed light brown sugar, and just whisk these in to your butter mixture. Now, you will need 7 large eggs.
We'll add this in with our butter and sugar mixture, and
we're going to give these a good whisk until all of the yolks are broken up, everything's nicely scrambled and beaten together.
Now that we have our eggs nicely mixed in we are going to add 2 cups of whole milk, and
also 1/2 cup of heavy cream, and we'll stir this again.
This already smells good.
This is really going to give your French Toast Casserole such a great flavor. This custard mixture combined with a challah bread,
it is out-of-this-world good. I tried so many different variations before finally settling on this combination. I really think you're going to like it.
So now that we've mixed everything together, we're going to pour this evenly over our bread pieces.
I just try to pour it evenly, but we are going to
mix everything up and make sure that all of our bread is evenly coated in just a minute.
And again, you want to scrape that bowl get all of that cinnamon,
maple, butter goodness out of there and into your bread crumbs.
You'll want to just use a spatula to just very gently work the bread around
so that it's all covered with
some of that custard mixture. You want to make it so that all of that bread gets a chance to soak in that good
cinnamon butter mixture that we just spent all that time preparing, and
again be gentle when you're doing this the bread is a little fragile.
You don't want to work it into mush, you want it to keep that nice
1-inch chunk shape, so just be kind of gentle, but do work everything around.
So now we can set this aside.
We're going to want to let this French Toast Casserole
mixture sit for at least fifteen to thirty minutes so that it has the chance to absorb as much of that custardy goodness as possible.
Meanwhile, we can prepare our topping so for this topping.
I like to use my food processor.
If you don't have a food processor,
you can just use a pastry cutter to combine your ingredients, that will work just as well.
The first thing that you'll need for your topping is 1/3 cup of all-purpose flour. I'm just going to add this into my food processor.
We'll also add 1/2 cup of tightly packed light brown sugar, and 2 and 1/4 teaspoons of ground cinnamon.
Now I'm just going to briefly pulse these ingredients together so that they get nicely combined. Now that I have those combined,
I'm going to be adding 8 tablespoons of salted butter. As you can see, I've cut this into pieces and I'm just going to
scatter this over my mixture in the food processor.
Now, again, if you don't have a food processor at this point,
you would just use your pastry cutter to cut the ingredients together until it resembles coarse crumbs.
And again, we're going to pulse this mixture just until it looks like coarse crumbs.
You don't want to overdo it or you're going to have clumps that are kind of difficult to distribute over your casserole.
So just do it until the butter has been totally worked into the mixture and it looks like coarse crumbs.
All right. This looks pretty good.
Now at this point, if you're making your French Toast Casserole in advance, if you plan on serving this tomorrow morning,
what you'll do is you are going to wrap up your casserole pan with your soaked bread in it.
You're going to wrap that tightly with plastic wrap and you're going to put that in the fridge.
This you are going to put in an airtight container.
Just a Tupperware container should be fine and also place that in the refrigerator until the next morning.
You will assemble it by pouring your crumbs over top of your french toast casserole.
And then you will bake it according to the recipe instructions. I'm going to explain in just a minute.
I plan on serving this right away. So I'm just going to scatter these crumb toppings evenly over my casserole right now.
All right, now, we've added our topping and remember whether you are making this in advance or serving right away,
you don't add the topping until just before it goes into the oven.
Once you've added your topping your french toast casserole is going to need to bake in a
375 degree Fahrenheit preheated oven for about 50 minutes.
You'll be able to tell that your French Toast Casserole is done because if you wiggle it, it should seem pretty set.
It's not going to seem like it's pure fluid in the center, and another way
I like to check that it's done is to use a butter knife and just insert that in the center, and
as you can see this one came out mostly clean. It doesn't have a lot of that custard on it or anything like that.
So this French Toast Casserole is finished baking.
It's puffed up a lot in the oven, but that is going to deflate some as it sits, and I do recommend serving your French
Toast Casserole warm. we're going to let it cool off just a little bit and then we are going to dig in and
That is how I make french toast casserole.
I think you guys are going to love this flavorful simple recipe, and if you try it out
Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
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