Sign up for Meridian’s Free Newsletter, please CLICK HERE
If you love French toast, try making it this way. Instead of a soft, eggy crust, make it with a crusty, almost crispy coating. It’s delightful!
It’s simple to make. Instead of dipping the bread in an ordinary egg wash, dip it in a batter made with egg and flour. It will be crispy, almost like a tempura batter.
The recipe that follows was developed by our friend and former employee, LouAnne Johnson, who is an exceptional cook. It’s for a cream cheese stuffed French toast but you can use it with everyday French toast too.
The filling includes cinnamon chips. They melt during cooking to create swirls of sweet cinnamon. There is a variation for a jam-swirled cream cheese filling also.
Lou Anne’s Cinnamon Swirled Stuffed French Toast
This is an unusual recipe with flour added to the egg and milk mixture, more like a tempura batter.
Ingredients
6 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup cinnamon chips
10 slices good quality bread
1 large egg
1 cup cold milk
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla butter for frying
Directions
Combine the cream cheese, sugar, and cinnamon chips in a bowl. Spread the mixture on half the slices of bread and top with the other half to form sandwiches.
Whisk the egg, milk, and vanilla together. Gradually stir in the flour.
Heat a skillet with a couple tablespoons of butter in it. When the skillet is hot, dip the sandwiches in the egg mixture, turning to cover both sides, and then place them in the hot skillet. Cook one side of the sandwiches and then the other until the French toast is lightly browned. Serve immediately.
Raspberry Almond Cheese Stuffed French Toast: Omit the cinnamon chips and vanilla. Add three or four tablespoons seedless raspberry jam and one teaspoon almond extract to the cream cheese.
You may also enjoy these cornbread recipes:
Sweet Buttermilk Cornbread
We love cornbread—all kinds of cornbread.
The following recipe calls for cornmeal soaked overnight in buttermilk, a trick that we learned from Peter Reinhart in his great book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.
This is Yankee cornbread, sweetened with honey and brown sugar. We think you will love it.
We classify cornbreads as two types: Rich cornbreads made without flour that use eggs to bind the bread and temper the cornmeal, and more bread-like cornbreads with a high flour content. Most of the latter cornbreads have about equal amounts of cornmeal and flour. This recipe belongs in that group. What makes this skillet cornbread recipe different is the overnight soaking of cornmeal to plump the grains of corn.
We invite you to try different grinds of cornmeal in this recipe. We like it with a coarser grind. If you can find some cornmeal with the germ in it, by all means try that.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 cups buttermilk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 large eggs
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 16-ounce whole kernel corn, drained
Directions
1.The night before, mix the cornmeal and buttermilk together in a medium bowl. Let it sit overnight at room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder together.
3. In a third bowl, whisk the eggs and then add the sugar. Stir until combined and syrupy. Add the honey, melted butter, and corn and mix well.
4. Add the wet mixture to the cornmeal and buttermilk mixture. Add the dry ingredients one-third at a time and mix until moistened. The batter should be pourable like a cake batter. Because different grinds of cornmeal absorb moisture differently and because the drained corn may carry different moisture levels, you may need to adjust the batter slightly with additional milk or flour.
5. On the stovetop, melt two tablespoons of vegetable shortening in an oven-proof 11 to 12-inch skillet until very hot. Pour the batter into the pan. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 35 minutes or until the top is browned and firm and springy. (This is a moist cornbread and needs to be well-cooked.) Cool in the pan.
Parmesan and Bacon Cornbread
It’s fun to experiment with cornbread. Add your favorites to a cornbread recipe—and you can really be creative. Try sun-dried tomatoes, salami, green peppers, cheddar, or mushrooms. Think of your favorite pizza and add some of the same ingredients to cornbread.
In this savory version, we added crisply cooked bacon, onions, basil, and parmesan cheese. We loved it. Incidentally, this bread, with the aromas of bacon, onions, parmesan, and basil, smells absolutely wonderful while baking.
Ingredients
1/2 to 2/3 cups crisply-cooked bacon pieces
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon dry, crushed basil
4 tablespoons butter, melted
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
2/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup diced onion
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prepare a nine-inch pan by greasing well. (We baked this bread in a nine-inch springform pan with a glass base.)
1. Mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, and basil in a medium bowl.
2. Mix the bacon pieces, melted butter, eggs, milk, cheese, and onion together in another bowl. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients to the dry. Stir together until mixed.
3. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean. If baked in a deeper pan or a light-colored pan, it may take longer to bake. Cool on a wire rack for ten minutes and serve warm.
