Air Fryer French Toast Sticks

 From: Love Bakes Good Cakes

Ingredients:

• 12 slices Texas Toast
• 1 cup milk
• 5 large eggs
• 4 tbsp. butter, melted
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp. cinnamon
• Maple syrup, optional

Slice each bread slice into thirds.
In a bowl, add the milk, eggs, butter, and vanilla. Whisk until combined.
In a separate bowl, add the cinnamon and sugar.
Dip each bread stick quickly into the egg mixture.
Sprinkle the sugar mixture onto both sides.
Place into the air fryer basket and cook at 350°F for about 8 minutes or until just crispy.
Remove from basket and allow to cool. Serve with maple syrup, if desired.

Verdict:

Oh my gosh, ALL the thumbs up!! I will say it was harder than I thought to find really thick bread (thank you, Publix, for having Nature's Own Perfectly Crafted bread!) and I was able to slice mine into fourths instead of thirds. Other than that I followed the recipe to the dot! I didn't add a thing to mine, whereas my clearly sugar-obsessed family added both maple syrup AND powdered sugar to theirs. Bahaha!

I don't even like french toast, and I will FIGHT you for these. Wow!!

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??

French Toast - Overnight Baked

From: My friend Portia

Ingredients:
1 1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
¾ c. melted butter
¼ c. + 2 TBS. light corn syrup
French bread loaf, appx. 17” long (cut into 15 – 1.5” slices)
4 large eggs
2 1/2 c. milk
1 TBS. vanilla extract
½ tsp. salt
5 TBS. sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. butter melted (for topping)

Stir together 1st three ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly approximately 5 minutes or until very bubbly. Pour mixture into a greased 9 x 13 baking dish. Immediately arrange 10 bread slices over mixture. Whisk together eggs, milk, vanilla & salt, gradually pour over bread slices. Cover & refrigerate at least 8 hours. Stir together sugar & cinnamon, sprinkle evenly over bread. Drizzle ¼ c. melted butter on top. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until golden & bubbly. Let stand 10 minutes & serve.


What I did differently from the recipe:
I just used regular bread instead of french loaf bread.

What I'll do differently next time:
Not sure...

Verdict:
Neutral. I have to say, the tops were delicious. We love french toast. But there was like an inch of liquid on the bottom that never evaporated, so by the time the bread had soaked for 8 hours and then cooked for almost another hour, the bread was just mushy on the bottom layer. We like our french toast crispy, so this wasn't very appetizing to us. Not sure how I can fix this issue, or if I can. It might just be that some people like mushy french toast! Feel free to test this recipe and figure out the liquid part - like I said, the top part was very tasty!!