Baked Sweet Bread French Toast

I always end up with waaaay more sweet bread than I need when I have a party. No matter – the kids love it.

This time I had a full bag and since it was too dried out for child-consumption (i.e. after sitting out for 2 hours it was hard and they wouldn’t touch it) I cut it up and made a quick baked french toast out of it. Sweet bread as french toast is the best – and when you bake it up nice and custardy, it’s perfection.

ingredients:
1 bag of King’s Hawaiian sweet bread (approx 12 ounces) *dried out
5 eggs
2-1/2 cups milk
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 teaspoons maple syrup
pinch of salt
butter for pan

1 Tablespoon sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Butter a 9″x13″ baking dish.

If your sweet bread is not already dried out, leave it out for a few hours and that’ll do it. You don’t want it hard as a rock, just a little crispier than bread should be…

Once it’s a little ‘hard’, slice it into 3/4″ pieces. Lay it in the pan sort of overlapping however you like, just so the pan is full and there isn’t too much movement for the bread.

Now mix up the custard. In a medium bowl stir the eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, maple syrup and salt.

Pour the custard mixture over the bread – carefully! – getting all the bread nice and soaked. Turn them upside down and up and over if you need to. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

When you are ready to eat, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Take the prepped pan out of the fridge, and sprinkle with the 1-1/2 tsp cinnamon and 1 TB of sugar. It just adds a nice little topping, not too heavy. This ain’t dessert people, it’s still breakfast.

Bake for 30 minutes until the top is nice and crispy and the custard has set. Serve nice and hot with syrup. I like to serve it to the kids with a side of Maple Bacon and lots of fruit!