Maple Blueberry French Toast Bake

Dietary Needs:

Nut Free, Soy Free, Vegetarian

Recipe Author:

From the What’s for Lunch? Cookbook

Servings

Total Time to Make

1 hour

This Maple Blueberry French Toast Bake is a crowd-pleasing variation of French Toast from our cookbook, What’s for Lunch?. Instead of dipping individual slices of bread into an egg mixture and frying them, we bake up a pan full of bread cubes with a delicious maple custard mixture and blueberries. If you don’t have blueberries, substitute cranberries or diced apples, or whisk 1 cup mashed squash or pumpkin in with the egg mixture!

Ingredients

Margarine or cooking spray for greasing the pan
6 eggs
¾ cup (175 ml) milk
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
2 Tbsp (30 ml) maple syrup or brown sugar
½ tsp (2.5 ml) cinnamon
¼ tsp (1.25 ml) nutmeg
⅛ tsp (.65 ml) salt
½ lb (227 g) whole wheat bread (about half a loaf)
1 ½ cups (375 ml) fresh or frozen blueberries
For the topping: 2 Tbsp (30 ml) maple syrup or brown sugar

Directions

Let’s bake! Grease the baking pan with margarine or spray well with cooking spray. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, vanilla, 2 Tbsp maple syrup or brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.
Cut or tear the bread into ½” pieces. Add the blueberries and bread to the egg mixture and stir to combine.
Pour the mixture into the baking pan. Cover with foil and let stand at room temperature for one hour, or refrigerate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. If you are using brown sugar instead of maple syrup for the topping, sprinkle it over the French Toast Bake and put the foil cover back on. Bake for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil with oven mitts and bake for 10-15 more minutes, until golden brown.
Carefully remove from the oven with oven mitts and place on a heatproof surface. If topping with maple syrup, drizzle it over the bake while it is still warm. Cut into six pieces and serve. Leftover French Toast Bake can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Notes

For best results, start this recipe the day before you plan to serve it. Use it Up! Dice and freeze stale bread, bagels, English muffins, leftover biscuits, or Lu’skinikn (add link) until you have the 5 cups needed to make this recipe.