BBQ Burn Out Monday - #5: Blog Appetit

Well, I'm almost back in the blogosphere. I'll be writing my own posts again soon. But not tonight!

Tonight - welcome to another edition of Barbecue Burn Out Monday. Tonight I'd like to welcome my friend Faith from Blog Appetit. Faith has a great blog all about foods, techniques and equipment that you'll never see in the world of competitive BBQ. You will actually find recipes involving vegetables over there. What a concept. But remember, I promised to introduce you to new and unusual cooks and Faith is one of the best. Tonight we get breakfast! Take it away Faith.

When I first accepted the offer of being a guest blogger I was intimidated by the amount of meat, rubs and smoke that emanate from White Trash BBQ. I wanted to share something that would kind of fit right in, but yet be different from the usual WTBBQ post. I still wanted to be loyal to my Blog Appetit home-cooking roots as well.

Peach cobblers, hot sauces and bean-based side dish recipes all came to mind, but they somehow didn’t seem right. Then I realized what I had to blog about. A recipe I have never even shared with my own loyal readers – Custard French Toast. A breakfast dish so sweet and delicious is should be legally only be allowed to be served for dessert. A recipe that is absolutely ruined if you try to make it healthy by cutting back on the eggs or substituting whole wheat or multigrain bread.

And one my now teenage sons still promise their friends I’ll make for them if they come over. Eggs, sugar, milk, butter and white (or egg) bread. What’s not to like? Serve it with love, it really needs little else, although a drizzle of maple syrup is okay, too.

Custard French Toast

Serves 4-8 depending on age, cholesterol level and appetite

• Loaf of unsliced French, Italian or similar bread; challah, brioche or other egg bread, or thickly sliced white bread (sometimes called Texas toast).Do NOT use whole wheat or multigrain bread. Stale or day old bread works well.
• Four eggs, beaten
• One 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk. (It’s okay to use the fat-free kind of you want.) Tip: Open with a can opener and completely remove lid. Use a small spatula to get all the sticky contents out of the can.
• 24 ounces of milk (fat free okay)
• Tsp. of vanilla extract
• Dash salt
• Grating or two of nutmeg (or about 1/8 tsp if ground)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• Butter for frying
• Cinnamon sugar (mix equal parts of ground cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl)
• Powdered (confectioner’s) sugar

Preheat oven to 200 degrees

Slice bread about 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Lay sliced bread to dry out a bit.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, milks, extract, salt, nutmeg and cinnamon. Mix well so all ingredients are well combined.

In a large, flat pan (I use a glass lasagna pan), pour out about a quarter of the egg and milk mixture and swirl pan so it coats the bottom.

Put down a layer of bread slices. Do not overlap. Top with rest of the mixture. If you have more slices then space, don’t use a second pan, just pour about half of your remaining egg and milk mixture over the first layer of slices, making sure you cover the tops of the bread. Put another layer of bread slices on top and pour the rest of the mixture to cover those slices.

Allow to soak in the egg and milk mixture for five (for softer breads) to 10 minutes (for firmer ones), turning and rotating the slices to make sure the bread becomes really saturated with the custard mixture. Handle with care as the slices become very soft and soggy.

Preheat a large frying pan.

Melt about 2 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon of butter in the pan as needed and carefully add the bread. Do not crowd the pan. Fry on a medium to medium hot temperature until golden brown on one side. Flip.

Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on browned top of bread being careful not to get any in the frying pan (to avoid burning.)

Cook until golden brown on other side. Remove finished slices and keep warm in a low oven while frying remaining slices, adding more butter to the pan as needed.

Sprinkle with powered sugar and serve with maple syrup.

I'm back - Wow - that sounds great; and it's adaptable to the BBQ circuit. We can cook this in a classic cast iron pan over a hot fire. We've always got a 200 degree cooker going somewhere. We'll be the envy of the cooks with Faith's French Toast for breakfast! Thanks so much for the recipe.

Well, that's it for tonight. Be sure to check out Faith's blogs: Blog Appetit, I wanna be a food writer, Blog Appetit in Vietnam, and Blog Appetit does Soup. Four Blogs. I don't know how she does it. I can't keep up with one!