Cinnamon Baked French Toast

​Do you remember Saturday's post featuring a stuffed summer sandwich? In order to make this delicious sandwich, I had to hollow out the middle of a round loaf of Italian bread.  

​The bread was so good that I hated to throw the insides away so I decided to turn it into a Cinnamon Baked French Toast casserole.  

​Cinnamon Baked French Toast
1/2 loaf french bread, cut into cubes  (I used Italian bread.)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup + 2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon vanilla

Topping
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter

​Place bread cubes in a greased 8x8 pan.

​Whisk together eggs, milk, cream. (and 1/4 plus 2 Tablespoons sugar)

​Pour mixture over bread.

​Cover pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

​Combine flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and salt.  Cut in butter with pastry blender.

​Store streusel mixture in a ziploc bag in refrigerator.

​Remove baking pan from the oven and sprinkle streusel over bread.

​Bake 45 minutes at 350.  

​Let the casserole rest for about 10 minutes before slicing.

​I pulled this recipe off of a fellow foodbuzz food blogger's website: fortheloveofcooking.com.  She has great recipes on her blog and I've made several things from her blog recipes.  This recipe had a few problems though.  There were 2 ingredients listed (cinnamon and sugar) that were not mentioned in the instructions.   When I started to mix the streusel ingredients together, I realized that the instructions had omitted the cinnamon - so I added it.  It was at this point that I also realized that I not added any sugar to the casserole.   Unfortunately my casserole was already in the refrigerator at that point and it was too late to go back and add any ingredients.  I decided to go ahead and bake it just the way it was - sans sugar .  What did I have to lose?
Turns out, if you drown the french toast in syrup, you don't even miss the sugar.  (That is precisely what my daughter and her friend did before they ate their french toast.)   
This is a great breakfast to fix for your family over the summer because you can put it together the night before you want to eat it.  I love mornings that I can sleep in a few extra minutes and still get breakfast on the table.  

Ciao!

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