Custard French Toast

This is such a quick recipe, basic ingredients and an amazing result.  My kids have always loved French toast, and we’ve been toying with recipes since we got married.  We finally figured out that it’s less dependent on the particular recipe and more on the technique, one part in particular.  We’ve never served this French toast to less than spectacular comments.  Hoping you enjoy it and that your guests do too!

Ingredients

4 eggs

1 egg yolk

2 cups of milk – the fatter the better – try to use at least 2%

At least 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, and don’t you dare use artificial extract

1-2 tbsp of sugar – I prefer it sweeter, my wife prefers it less sweet – adjust this to your taste

Up to a tsp of salt, pending on your preference – usually at least 3/4 tsp to give it a little edge of saltiness

French bread – you can use fresh, but it’s not nearly as good as when it’s just a little crustier – about a day old.

 

Whisk all the ingredients except the French bread together in a bowl.  Cut the French bread (if you cut it on a slight bias it looks prettier) and make sure you cut the slices about 3/4″ thick.  Thinner slices won’t have the same effect.  Once the bread is ready, pour all the ingredients into a low-sided pyrex pan.  Then place all the bread slices into the pan, or as many as you can fit.  This is the part that’s most important – the bread should be soaked for at least 15 minutes.  I always poke the bread on both sides with a fork to let even more of the wet ingredients soak in.  The key is to flip the bread over at least 4 or 5 times, to ensure that the mixture soaks right through the bread.  Here’s a little warning – that soaked bread will get very fragile and will want to fall apart in your hands when you’re flipping it.  Use a big spatula to do the dirty work so you’re not working with tiny broken up pieces of bread.

Once the bread is properly soaked, get some unsalted butter on a griddle or a frying pan.  Don’t use vegetable spray for Pete’s sake – it’ll taste wrong and you’re not eating this meal to lose weight.  Once that butter is bubbling, make sure the griddle is on low and fry each side of this soaked toast for about 3-4 minutes.  Just until the bread is golden brown and the inside is like custard.  The first time we tried this, we were worried that the custardy inside of the toast was not cooked, which would be an issue since it has eggs in it.  Since then, we’ve become comfortable with the fact that it’s cooked through just fine and the custardy texture is from the ingredients mixing with the bread.  Just know that when done properly, the inside of this French toast will be mushy and custardy.

We serve ours a lot of different ways.  We almost always dust our French toast with icing sugar, and we’ve served ours with fresh berries, slices of canned peaches, banana slices and even sauteed apples.  But most often, we just heat up maple syrup and do it that way.

As far as my kids’ reaction to this French toast – both of them absolutely love it and will eat as much as you will give them.  We had this tonight, and both Abigail and Amalie had 3 slices of it.  It’s a hit with adults and kids alike, and works for any meal of the day.  Hope you love it!

If you’ve enjoyed this recipe, feel free to share it, and feel free to browse our other recipes under the food tab on my blog.