Tuesday's Food: Crockpot French Toast

So, my friend, Tara, over at MommyTime, and I have been trying out recipes from Stephanie O'Dea's blog, A Year of Slow Cooking. We decided since we both love our slow cookers, and we are blogging about it anyway, we were going to take on the joint effort of going through Stephanie's recipes, trying them on our families, and then blogging about it. Go on over to MommyTime and check out her schedule (she's a much better planner than I) and then come here on Tuesdays to see what I've done.


Today's recipe is a French Toast one that can cook overnight or made in time for Brinner that evening. I am in love with French Toast. It's not very good for me, so I'm always trying to find alternative, healthier version of this awesome, yummy breakfast. I adjusted the recipe I found here for various reasons, but I'll explain that as I go.

Ingredients:

--1 whole loaf of bread (I used 1/2 of a loaf of homemade cinnamon raisin bread I made a while a go)
--1 dozen eggs (I used 10 eggs and a cup of applesauce instead). 
--2 t vanilla
--4 cups of milk (I used 3 cups)
--1/4 t salt
--2 t cinnamon
--1/4 cup brown sugar
--1/4 cup walnuts, or other desired nuts (optional. I did not use nuts this time.)

AND...I used nutmeg. I always use a dash of nutmeg with my French Toast. So yummy! 

Directions: 

It is recommended to use a large (6 quart) crockpot, but since mine was already in use for dinner, I used my 3 quart. Therefore, I used only half of my raisin bread. I recommend using enough bread to come just below the top of the bowl. The bread will expand. 

Grease the inside of your crockpot very well with butter, shortening, or cooking spray. Slice your bread into large slices (if it's already sliced, just dump it in) and place the bread into the crockpot. 

(isn't that just pretty bread?) 
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, applesauce, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla together. Pour on top of the bread. 

  

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours. This is done when the bread has soaked up all of the liquid and the egg has cooked (you can tell because you'll see bits of cooked egg stuck to the bread). I waited until about 10 pm the night before, since we get up at 6, and my smaller crockpot does not have a warming button or turns off when it's done. 

Okay...here we go...

 

As Stephanie suggested, when I got up, I took the lid off the crockpot to let any extra liquid evaporate. Worked GREAT! It gave me time to make the coffee, set out the plates and cups for the kids, and do a little devotion before they were ready to eat. 

This is what it looked like when I came into the kitchen at 6 am. 

I served it warm on the plate with a little powdered sugar. We don't really use a lot of syrup, and it was already a little sweet. My boys loved it, and were excited we had enough left over for tomorrow's breakfast (YES! I can sleep an extra 10 more minutes!). It didn't taste exactly like french toast. It did, though, taste like many of the other baked french toasts and overnight french toasts I have had before. It did also taste like bread pudding, which I seriously love (served at the local BBQ place), but only eat in small amounts. I would totally recommend this and have been told to make it again, because, well, in the words of my sons, I am "the best mom EVER for making such good breakfasts"! :)