My Take on French Toast

Brunch will never be the same again.

I love Chopped, but it seems like lately all the chefs can make is French Toast.  The past several episodes that we've seen have had a dessert round where one of the chefs makes French Toast.  (Usually the other chef makes a Neapolitan.)  So to all chefs who consider going on Chopped, this is for you.

French Toast is not a dessert.  It is a breakfast or brunch food.  In fact, it's a rather delicious way to start the day.

So here's my take on French Toast.

1. Beat together eggs, milk, cinnamon, vanilla and powdered sugar with a whisk. 

The better your ingredients are, the better your French Toast will be.  For luxurious French Toast, use fresh, free-range, organic, local eggs (room temperature).  Use organic and/or filtered milk (I've used vanilla soy milk before).  You can really splurge with real vanilla that you scrape from the pods, or just make sure to get vanilla extract and not vanilla flavouring. 

Using powdered (confectioner's) sugar means that you won't have any graininess from the sugar and can get a great melt-in-your-mouth consistency on the inside of your French Toast.  Just sieve in a little to the batter.

2. Soak your bread in the wet mixture. 

Slightly stale breads often work well in French Toast because they can suck up the moisture.  I used a apple, walnut, and rye loaf that we had bought at the market from a local artisan baker.

3.  Cook in a frying pan on medium heat.  If you want extra yumminess, cook with some butter in the pan.

4.  Serve with butter and syrup.  We served by stacking two slices with cream cheese in the middle and topping with vanilla cream, strawberries and dark chocolate shavings.

5. Share and enjoy.  We made it and then all piled back into bed for breakfast.  Delicious, even if the kids got syrup on our bed ;)

Chopped

We recently visited my parents in the States.  Both of my sisters were in town at the same time as well.  Now, there were a lot of things that we could have done together.  There's one thing, though, that we all love: food.  We watched a fair amount of the Food Network together, and one night we did a great activity: Chopped.  Chopped is a TV show where the competitors are given a basket of ingredients, and they have to use all of the ingredients in one cohesive dish.  (Click here to find out more about Chopped.)

My dad and sister picked the ingredients and acted as judges. 

Our baskets had: feta cheese, sprinkles, sparkling water, whipped cream (the squirty kind in a can), sweet potato, kiwi, grapefruit, peach (doughnut), plum, gluten free crackers, jabanero pepper, and spinach (fresh leaves).  In addition we could use any items in their house/garden.

Rather than just having one dish, we actually cooked both an appetizer and a dessert.  All of the items had to be used, but we could choose which items to use in which dish.

My husband and I (Away Team) competed against my mother and other sister (Home Team). 

Team Home's Menu:

Appetizer: A selection of nibbles, including home-made chutney served on the crackers and stuffed spinach leaves.

Followed by a palate cleanser drink (sparkling water, grapefruit, kiwi, etc.).

Dessert: Mini sweet potato cream pies

Away Team's Menu:

Appetizer: Salad with a grapefruit vinaigrette served on a sweet potato flower

Dessert: Italian Cream Soda (Peach and vanilla flavour) with a plum, apple, and pecan crumble

After careful deliberation, the judges announced the results: both teams scored perfect 100's!  So we tied. 

My dad still maintains that, as judge, he won, as he got to pick ingredients he liked and then eat the food we all made :)