Caramel French Toast

From: My old recipe index cards

Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/4 cup butter
French bread slices
2 1/2 cups milk
1 Tbsp flour
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Combine first three ingredients in saucepan. Cook over medium heat for five minutes. Pour into a 9x13 pan (spray well with cooking spray).

Arrange bread slices over syrup in dish.

Combine milk and next four ingredients in a bowl; whisk. Pour over bread slices. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over bread slices. Bake for 50 minutes.

Verdict:
Okay, so I have tried overnight french toast before. And it was basically a disaster, turning out mushy and disgusting. This old index card was pretty much the same recipe (a few tweaks) so I went online to figure out what went wrong the last time. Apparently, the recipe should say to REMOVE the bread slices from the liquid in the 9x13 pan BEFORE you bake them. Not bake them in the liquid like the recipe seems to read.

So that's what I did this time. I have to admit, I was pretty excited, because people online were saying how puffy their french toast was, and how delicious... well, this turned out okay. It wasn't mushy, so that's a victory. But the caramelized sauce wreaked havoc on my baking sheet (maybe I should have known that would happen??) and the french toast had a great flavor but it just seemed like so much hassle. After sitting out for a few minutes the syrup started to harden (in a good way) and I did enjoy it, but it took WAY longer in my opinion to make the five slices for myself than it did to make nine slices the "old" way (in the skillet) for the rest of the family. And dirtied up a lot more pans.

I probably won't be attempting another overnight french toast recipe, unless someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong. Any advice??