For other sweet cold weather recipes, check out this creamy cheesy sweet persimmons tart or
cider donuts topped with cinnamon sugar

What I’m about to share with you is something that is equally as tasty as it is mindful of using old kitchen scraps and cleaning out your fridge/freezer.
What do you call that?
You call that a double whammy, my friends. A stinkin’ double whammy.

One of the million helpful things my mom taught us growing up was how to make new from old. Wether that has to do with furniture, clothes, or even… Food.
You may be a bit hesitant to talk about using old food in your recipes… But stick with me here.

Whenever I have old bread laying around the house, I always chuck it in the freezer rather than throwing it out. My go-tos for frozen stale bread are delicious homemade croutons for salads or savory breadcrumbs for meatballs and eggplant parm. However, the other weekend, I was hankering for a sweet brunch… And the last thing I wanted to do was to go wait in a long line somewhere in Atlanta to buy it. So… I searched the fridge high and low and bam. This recipe was formed.

INGREDIENTS

The Toast

4 slices of old frozen ciabatta bread
(or any other thick sliced bread you have frozen)

2 eggs

2-3 Tbsp of milk or vanilla almond milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

pinch of cinnamon

1 tsp grated orange rind

The Syrup

1 cup real maple syrup

1 cinnamon stick

pinch of ground cloves or nutmeg

(or heck… Both!)

You will want to make sure that your bread has thawed most of the way, or throw it in the microwave for 20 seconds or so to defrost it. No one wants to start french toast from a frozen baguette. The bread needs to be soft enough to soak up all the goodness that’s about to ensue.
Next, you will want to thickly slice your bread (to be proportionate to this recipe). If you happen to have thinner bread, you may want to cut down on the spices a bit, just to make sure your bread doesn’t soak up way too much goodness and overwhelm your mouth. An average-whelmed mouth is a happy mouth. What? Moving on…

Mix all of your wet toast ingredients and spices together. Whisk them really well and then let each piece of thawed toast sit in the mixture for about 20 second on each side. Get a really good coating on each, and make sure the goodness soaks all the way to the middle of the bread (the thicker the bread, the longer you may need to let it soak).

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan you can mix your syrup ingredients together and simmer on medium low… not hot enough to burn or boil, but hot enough to allow the cinnamon stick to quickly infuse into the sauce.

Next, Bring a pan (with butter, vegetable oil, coconut oil, or your cooking fat of choice) to medium heat. Make sure that it is genuinely at medium heat, because you want your toast to be golden brown, not floppy, or burnt.

Cook the toast thoroughly on each side, allowing the bread to brown in the pan, but don’t worry about “cooking” thoroughly the whole way through. This will happen naturally by the time your bread is to the perfect golden brown state.

Place your fancy toast on a plate, top with your sexy sauce and boom. Deliciousness awaits.

This seriously all takes about 20 minutes to do. You can’t really beat that now can you?