Crème Brûlée French Toast

My mom always makes an amazing overnight French toast at Easter.  I usually provide the challah and she makes the amazing brunch!

I’ve always wanted to make it myself, but I never really needed to make a large batch of French toast for just my little family and I don’t ever really have company over for brunch (I’m more in the breakfast for dinner camp).

Then, I made challah for secret recipe club AND my in-laws were in town, so I finally had a chance to make my French toast!

My mom and I were playing phone tag, so I was having trouble getting her recipe, so I started poking around online and found out that Crème Brûlée French Toast is a thing.  When I finally got ahold of my mom I realized that I liked bits of her recipe better and ended up making a few changes to the Crème Brûlée version to get the best of both worlds!

Recipe notes:

-Feel free to use all half & half or all heavy cream in this recipe.  Whole milk may replace a quarter of the totally cream

-Use challah, French bread, or Texas toast for the bread.

Crème Brûlée French Toast

Adapted from Six Sisters Stuff

½ cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp light corn syrup

1 loaf challah bread, sliced into 1-inch thick slices

6 eggs

¾ cup half & half

¾ cup heavy cream

2 tbsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp rum or whisky (optional)

Dash of salt

½-1 tsp ground cinnamon

Place the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat to melt.  Once melted, stir in the brown sugar and corn syrup, stirring until completely combined and smooth.

Pour the brown sugar mixture onto a large rimmed jellyroll pan and spread evenly.  Place the bread slices over the sugar, leaving as little empty space as possible.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, half & half, cream, vanilla, rum, and salt.  Pour the mixture over each piece of the bread.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

The next morning, most of the egg mixture will have been absorbed into the bread.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Carefully flip each piece of bread (I used my hands), so the sugar side is facing up (some sugar will likely remain on the bottom of the pan – this is a good thing).

Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, the tops of the bread should just begin to crisp.  Use a spatula to flip the bread (now the rest of the sugar should be sticking to the bread and facing up).  Return to the oven for 10 minutes.  Then, move to the top rack and broil for 1-2 minutes or until the sugar on top is caramelized.

Serve immediately with whipped cream and fresh fruit.

Serves 8-10