Tasty Tuesdays - French Toast

Yay, we have a kitchen again and it is definitely a relief to eat some home cooked food again after all that eating out!  I am linking this post up with Lean Lena and several other bloggers for Tasty Tuesday. It's a great resource for recipes and other food ideas.

Before I get into the recipe, here are some before and after photos of our kitchen.

Good-bye to old 60's cabinets, peeling wallpaper, floral tiles and temperamental appliances

We also opened up part of a wall between the kitchen and living room

We put in a lot of thought into the first thing to cook in our new kitchen and we decided upon french toast.  Yum! I started out with this recipe from Simply Recipes and altered it a bit.

4 eggs
2/3 cup milk
2 tsp cinnamon
Maple syrup
Zest of one orange
8 thick slices of 2 day old bread 

I used pre-sliced raisin bread from the grocery store.  It was thinly cut so I used more slices.  It was also fresh but that didn't make a difference at all.

I started out by combining the eggs, milk and cinnamon.  I also put in the zest of one orange and a tablespoon of maple syrup.

I put all the bread in a casserole dish.  I had to layer it since it didn't all fit in one layer.  I put in one layer of bread, put half of the egg mixture over top of it, put the second layer of bread on top, and then poured over the rest of the egg mixture. I spread the mixture around to make sure all the bread was well covered and let it sit for about 15 minutes so the bread could soak it up.

Next, I heated the griddle and buttered it. Once hot to medium high, I placed a batch of the bread on and cooked it for a couple minutes on one side until that side was golden brown.  Then I flipped it and cooked the other side for the same amount of time (roughly 5 minutes on each side).  All of the bread cooked in about three batches.

And since we were celebrating, we served it with some vanilla whipped cream as well as real maple syrup.

It was delicious and a fitting way to celebrate in our new kitchen.  It made enough that we had left overs for when I returned from my long run on Sunday :)