I can’t remember exactly when this started, but sometime in the last 6 months or so, every Friday has become “French toast Friday.” It’s easy to whip up fairly quickly, and it makes Fridays seem a little celebratory.

Last night, I decided to play around and do a little prep ahead of time. This is what I ended up making:

ImageIt’s sort of a cross between bread pudding and French toast. I’ve been obsessed with cardamom lately, and I wanted to include that in the breakfast, so this little baby was born.

If you want to replicate this, here are some general guidelines. I’m not much of a measurer when it comes to cooking, so this is my best guess about the quantities:

The dish holds slightly more than 3 cups of liquid and is oven safe. If you have a larger dish, bread puddings in general seem flexible enough to alter ingredients to suit any size dish, so you could add an egg or two, use more bread, and increase the liquid to fill your dish.

Cardamom French Toast Bread Pudding

6 slices whole wheat bread (about 2 cups when cut into 1″ pieces)

3 eggs

1/2 cup half and half

1 cup whole milk

1/4 cup agave

3 tsp cardamom

2 TBS turbinado sugar (raw sugar)

Cut bread into 1″ cubes and place in dish. With hand mixer or immersion blender or by hand, mix half and half, milk, eggs, agave, and cardamom until smooth. Pour over bread cubes. Sprinkle raw sugar on top. Leave in refrigerator overnight, or at least for several hours. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until it slightly wiggles, but a knife poked into the center comes out clean.

If you’re feeling really decadent, you can also make an optional blood orange icing to go on top. I’m sure any orange would be delicious, but I happened to have one little lonely blood orange on hand that wanted to be involved.

french toast friday-2For the icing I used 2TBS of butter, 1.5 TBS juice from the blood orange, and about 1/2 cup powdered sugar. I melted the butter, added juice and sugar, and stirred till smooth. Drizzle over the bread pudding and enjoy.

Hope you have a lovely Friday!

*Edited to add agave

 

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