Baked French Toast Trial

Yesterday I decided to make a new recipe for baked French toast to have for breakfast today. I found this one at allrecipes.com. I thought it interesting that it has apples on top, and wasn't sure I'd like that. But I do. I wish I could say the kids loved it, but really only Julia ate it. I also used a loaf of French bread from the grocery store bakery because it was right in front of me as I walked in the store yesterday. Maybe the kids would have liked it more if I'd either taken the crust off or used a different bread with a lighter crust. It also stuck to the pan. In general I think I should grease the pan more liberally for just about everything I bake. But the bread was fluffy and the apples were tasty. And the sauce that it is served with was good - pretty much a caramel sauce and also very good in my coffee this morning.

Here's the recipe I usually use:

Caramel French Toast (from Cooking Light magazine)

1 c. light brown sugar, packed
1/2 c. light corn syrup
1/4 c. butter
1 loaf Italian bread, sliced in 1 inch slices
2 1/2 c. milk
1 T. flour
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs
2 T. sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Combine the brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter in a small saucepan and cook on medium heat until mixture is bubbly, stirring constantly (about 5 min). Pour into a 9 by 13 greased baking dish. Arrange bread slices in a single layer over caramel in dish (you'll probably have a few slices that won't fit). Whisk together milk, flour, vanilla, salt, and eggs in a large bowl and pour over bread. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, preheat oven to 350. Combine sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over bread. Bake for 50 minutes and let stand for 5 before serving. Serves 10.

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After making the recipe with apples I noticed that the sauce that it is served with is very similar to the sauce for the Cooking Light recipe that is put on the bottom of the pan. (The other reason I didn't make that recipe was that I don't have corn syrup in the pantry and didn't feel like trying out a substitute for it.) So maybe the biggest difference - aside from putting apples on top - is the number of eggs used. I dare to say that the number of eggs in the apples recipe could be reduced and it would still be tasty.

And that's about all I have to say about that.