Lazy Breakfast.

I know Kevin needs to eat before he leaves for jiu jitsu class. But, I also know that I am tired in the mornings. Very tired. So I was looking through my email and noticed one from Cooking.com. All I saw was french toast, and that was all I needed to see. I was going to look for a future cooking experience, but when I saw that I could make it last night and put it in the oven in the morning I had to make it for breakfast today. We didn't have french bread, but we did have half a loaf of sandwich bread.

I did make a few changes in the recipe and have a few that I will make the next time I make this dish. Overall, it was really good, especially if you like french toast and don't like cooking too much in the morning (or get up really early).

"Bread"

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Here is the original recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 loaf (10 oz.) French bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 8 eggs
• 3 cups milk
• 4 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon salt, optional

Directions:

Place bread cubes in a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking dish. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and salt if desired. Pour over bread. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before baking. Dot with butter. Combine sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over top.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Let stand for 5 miutes. Serve with syrup if desired.

Now, the first change I made was the bread. I used just a regular loaf of bread. Next time I make it I want to have some challah bread on hand. In my opinion, challah bread makes the best french toast. In the morning, I decided to " Paula Deen" the casserole and use a whole stick of butter instead of 2 tablespoons. More butter can't be bad. But, it kinda made the top soggy, so next time I'll use half a stick of butter.When I made the cinnamon sugar mixture, I kinda made my own. I know you just need more sugar than cinnamon and I wanted a lot more than the recipe called for. I was glad I did because the inside of the casserole didn't have too much flavor. We thought syrup would fix that, but we were out of syrup. So, I sprinkled more cinnamon-sugar on each serving. Next time I will try drizzling syrup in the pan before baking it in the morning, and stirring it a little to get that maple flavor all throughout. This morning was great. I woke up, took it out of the fridge and preheated the oven.  I did some other just-woke-up things, came back and put it in the oven. Kevin's a huge protein eater so I also made him some bacon since that is all the breakfast meat we have right now. Again, watch the grease splatter. It splattered in my nostril this morning, and (in the style of charlie bit my finger) that really hurt! I also discovered something crazy delicious with my coffee. I have hazelnut creamer. We also have chocolate syrup left from the crepes. So I added my creamer and mixed in some chocolate syrup like when making chocolate milk. Then I added my coffe and one Splenda instead of two. Oh My Goodness!!!!!! Nutella coffee. It is so very very good! I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner! Also, last night, I had 3 crepes left over and defrosted them. I spread Nutella on them and put sliced strawberries on the Nutella. I rolled them up and we had a delicious, quick, and easy dessert.