I took New Year’s Eve off from work because I met all but one of my crazy-assed deadlines during the holiday season and now I could breathe, and, well, why the hell not take the day off.
And as a last hurrah before the old year ended and the new one started with a new-found resolve to get back to healthy eating, I thought I would make us a tasty breakfast. Stuffed French toast sounded good, but I had never made it and had no fresh fruit.
So this is my improvised-on-the-fly version. And it turned out fan-fucking-tastic and it was easy and if I were throwing calorie-caution to the wind, I would totally make this again.
Here’s what I assemebled:
What you don’t see here is a teaspoon of powdered sugar, but I’ll point out when that comes in. I am a firm believer in getting all the ingredients out at once because otherwise I am just a disorganized mess.
Now I really don’t need 18 eggs. I only needed four (and as it turns out, I could have used three) so I borked the eggs into this bowl and then added a little heavy cream and a little skim milk. That’s because skim milk would be too light, heavey cream would be too, well, heavy. A couple of tablespoons of each meet in the middle to make the eggs creamy and fluffy.
And then I added about a teaspoon of cinnamon because French toast is pretty bland without it. I used to not care for cinnamon in my French toast batter (if you’ve seen the movie “The Hangover,” you could say I was like a tiger) but I’ve since decided it adds a lot of flavor if it’s not overdone. This is totally optional if you don’t like cinnamon.
All of the egg/milk/cinnamon mixture was beaten until it cried, and then I started on the fillng. Now, stuffed French toast typically has a nice fruit compote in it and it is heavenly. Frozen berries would work very well here, but I was even out of that, so I decided to make a fruity creamy mix to stuff my toast.
And to do that, I sweetened about 3 ounces of mascarpone cheese (half a tub) with a teaspoon of powdered sugar and then added a tablespoon of my personal favorite toast condiment, Smucker’s black raspberry jam.
After I whipped the jam into the Italian cream cheese (I prefer that to Philly brand, but you could totally use that instead) the mixture was a color that I imagine would be most pleasing to a little kid. I loved it, too. You could totally use any flavor of jam or jelly you like. Strawberry would be amazing in this, so would orange marmalade or, if you are really sophisticated, a fig jam would be awesome. I have a preference for black raspberries because you can buy them at roadside stands in Indiana in the summer and to me, they are the next best thing to chocolate.
So I smeared it all over six slices of bread. Then I put the bread slices together like a sandwich and soaked them in the egg mixture for a few minutes while a couple of tablespoons of butter browned in a hot skillet. Then into the skillet went my three sandwiches.
Since the skillet was screaming hot, it only took a few minutes on each side. I was also trying not to get the creamy mixture in the middle so hot it would ooze out into the pan instead of on my plate — the preferred oozing place. So I had to make quick work of searing these French toast sandwiches.
When I was done, I simply had to toss on a few pecans because it’s not breakfast without a handful of pecans to me (I put them on pancakes, waffles, in cereal, yogurt, whatever) and then I think French toast always needs a kiss of whip cream. I used fat-free Reddi Whip. This is the finished product. At the table we topped it with a bit of sugar-free maple syrup.
And it was very tasty, if I do say so myself. If you are not calories conscious, I would recommend more filling. If you are, you could easily make this with reduced fat Philly and fresh fruit, use Egg Beaters and skim only in the batter, and a good butter substitute in a non-stick pan. Sky’s the limit on this one.
I am now looking forward to summer more than I usually do. If I am very good and meet my weight loss goals in 2010, I am totally making this with fresh black raspberries from some roadside stand in Indiana.
