recipe: baked french toast

When you live in a rowhouse and your house touches your neighbor's, it makes life so much easier when you have friendly people next door. Tony and I are lucky to have great neighbors on both sides of us. Tony's cleaned out their gutters, and they've cleaned our leaves. They've picked up our mail when we're gone, and we watched their houses for storm damage.

Plus, when we hang out, it only takes about 7 seconds to get there.

On Sunday morning, Tony and I had one set of neighbors over for brunch, and we scheduled it on the early side (10 a.m.), so I decided to make baked French toast. It's a recipe that's put together the night before and requires minimal prep work in the morning.

I served the French toast with scrambled eggs, and Tony threw together some of his famous bloody Marys. (I'll have to post his Bloody Mary recipe soon. Bloody Marys from a mix aren't even in the same ballpark has homemade ones.)

Baked French Toast

• small loaf of French bread

For egg mixture

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

For glaze

• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins

Grease an 11-by-7-inch baking dish. Cut the bread into about 11 or 12 pieces that are 1-inch thick each. Arrange in baking dish. 

For the egg mixture, in a bowl, combine eggs, milk, brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Pour over bread. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, remove the dish from the refrigerator and flip the bread slices. Most of the egg mixture will have been absorbed. Let sit for 30 minutes.

For the glaze, combine melted butter and brown sugar. Mix in walnuts and raisins. Pour over bread.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

Serves 4.