French Toast Cupcakes

Tomorrow I am embarking on a 10 day road trip to the east coast with my fantastic boyfriend, Bri.

Today is our 3 year anniversary and I am as happy as I was on day 1 with this guy.  He has become my best friend and I can't imagine what I would do with out him.  I am so excited to go on this trip with him.  We are going to Washington DC, New York City, and Boston.  It is going to be amazing and I can't wait to share all my adventures!

The fact that I can take this vacation also means that it is the last day of camp! Yesterday we celebrated two of the counselors birthdays and I brought in Gluten Free Nutella Brownies and French Toast Cupcakes.  These cupcakes are so yummy and you all should make them right now.  Plus, I thought it was cute to bring them to camp where we usually eat our treats in the morning.  This cupcake sounds like breakfast!

French Toast Cupcakes (adapted from Bakingdom)

Ingredients:
For the cupcake:
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup non-fat greek yogurt
For the streusel topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
5 tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
For the frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter
3 1/2-4 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup maple syrup

Directions:
1. Make the streusel: Stir the brown sugar, sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg together.  Using your hands, mix in the butter by pinching it in until mixture looks like wet sand and is crumbly.  Place in freezer while you make the cupcakes.
2. Preheat oven to 350 and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.  I made 24 large and 12 mini cupcakes with this recipe.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves together.
4. In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy.  Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined.  Beat in the vanilla.  Alternate adding in the flour mixture with the greek yogurt, starting with the flour and ending with the flour.  I did 1/3 flour, 1/2 yogurt, 1/3 flour, 1/2 yogurt, and 1/3 flour.  Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full.  Sprinkle the streusel topping evenly over all your cupcakes.  Bake for about 20 minutes (for the large cupcakes) or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  The mini cupcakes take slightly less time.
5. Make the frosting: Beat the butter on high until light and fluffy.  Beat in the sugar, 1/2 cup at at time, until you have a desired consistency and taste.  Beat in the vanilla, salt, and syrup.  Frost cooled cupcakes!

Enjoy :)

AND for more amazing French Toast ideas, please head on over to My King Cook!  There are some fantastic and different ideas for making french toast.  Who wouldn't want that?

Challah French Toast-Plain/Strawberry-Nutella/Blueberry/Peanut Butter-Banana

I made a TON of challah the other day for the May Daring Bakers' Challenge.  We had some at dinner, we sent some over to our neighbors, and still I had two whole loaves lying around.  So then, I got to thinking, what can I make with this challah?  The first option, that I'm sharing here today, came to me pretty quickly: Challah French Toast.

Challah French Toast is the best kind of french toast in my opinion and I thought it would be perfect for breakfast over Memorial Day Weekend.  I made three kinds of french toast: Regular, Blueberry Stuffed French, Raspberry-Nutella Stuffed, and Peanut Butter Banana Stuffed French Toast.  Everything came out beautifully and the clear winner for being just amazing was the Raspberry-Nutella guy.

Challah French Toast

Ingredients:
4 egg whites
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups skim milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
12 slices of challah (I used my Honey Whole Wheat Challah)

Directions:
1. Lightly grease a frying pan and set over medium heat.
2. In a large bowl with a flat bottom, whisk the egg whites, eggs, milk, vanilla, and salt.  Add in the cinnamon and nutmeg and other spices that you might want.
3. Cut the challah into 1- 1 1/2 inch thick slices.  For the stuffed challah: Spread and place the fillings in between two slices of bread to form a sandwich (Nutella and thinly slice strawberries, creamy peanut butter and thinly sliced bananas, and blueberry greek yogurt).
4. Place the slices of bread in the bowl with the egg batter and make sure both sides get coated.
5. Fry the bread in the pan, greasing as needed, until lightly browned on both sides.  Mine took about 3 or so minutes on each side.  Serve with additional fruit/syrup/powdered sugar.
Enjoy :)

It also works out nicely that you get Red White and Blue Challah :)

Sunday Brunch

DTS is throwing a Sunday Brunch and I am on the committee to help out.  I wanted to find a good recipe that everyone would love and that would feed 30 to 40 people.  We decided to make scrambled eggs, bacon, have fresh fruit, and some sort of potato or hash-browns.  I decided that a french toast casserole would be the perfect addition to this meal.  It screams Sunday Brunch and it can be made a head of time.  It's perfect.  I put it together on Saturday and then Sunday morning, all I had to do was pop it in the oven.

I found the recipe over at the The Pioneer Woman.  I had heard about her site and one day I decided to seriously check it out.  I am officially obsessed.  I need to get my hands on one of her cookbooks as I love all of her recipes.  I modified the recipe a tad to make it a little lighter/use ingredients that I had on hand. Also, I had to feed a ton of people so I doubled the original recipe.  Now it's time to go feast! I just love brunch :)

Cinnamon Baked French Toast (inspired by The Pioneer Woman)

Ingredients:
For the french toast:
2 loaves french bread
16 eggs
4 cups milk (I used 1%)
1 cup half and half cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
4 tbsp vanilla
For the topping:
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Directions:
1. Grease a LARGE pan.  The original recipe uses a 9 by 13 inch pan and I just found a big pan in my kitchen.  Tear the loaves into chunks and place in the pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix eggs, milk, cream, sugar, spices, and vanilla.  Mix well and pour over the bread.  Cover tightly and store in fridge for a least a few hours, or overnight.
3. Mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt in a medium sized bowl.  Cut in butter until you have a coarse mixture.  It will look a little like wet sand.  Store in a sealed container in the fridge.
4. When you are ready to make the french toast, preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Sprinkle topping over the bread and place in oven for 45 minutes-1 hour.  The shorter time will give you a softer, more bread-pudding like consistency and the longer will give you a more crisp french toast.
Serve with fresh fruit, butter, and/or syrup!

Enjoy :)