Melt In Your Mouth Carmelized Cinnamon French Toast

This recipe comes from Yahoo, which I think they got it from Bon Appetit Test Kitchen.  I cannot tell you how good this French Toast tastes, but it is the best French toast ever, despite my mistakes.  I bought a loaf of French bread a few days ago, which I was planning on using the next day, instead it's been about 4 days later and the loaf was almost as hard as a rock.

Not wanting to waste this loaf of bread and my husband making some type of comment regarding this, I set out to STILL use the loaf for French Toast, as I had intended.  Woke up early to make this before church, which my husband wasn't feeling too great, so we didn't end up going to church.  Boohoo.

As I cut the French bread, the end sort of was a bit crumbly, but I didn't want to waste it and put it in and made French toast out of it, too.  I discovered how yummy this was and the next time, instead of having large slices of bread for the toast, I'm going to make French Toast Nuggets or something.

This recipe is definitely a keeper and thanks Yahoo for publishing this in your newsfeed and Bon Appetit for sharing it.  You MUST eat this right after they are cooked.  It is not good if it sits around.  This is also a great way to use up bread that has hardened and you might want to throw out.  Don't!!! Make this French toast with it!

Makes - 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 4 Tbspn butter, room temp (or 30 sec in the microwave will speed this up if you forgot to set out)
• 3 Tbspns packed golden brown sugar
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1 Tbspn vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 Tbspns ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tspn ground nutmeg
• 8 1-inch slices French bread (or use the whole loaf)
• powdered sugar (I forgot to do this)
• maple syrup (my family used regular pancake syrup and I didn't use anything)

Directions:

• In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar and butter.

Your butter should not be liquidy, rather softened.

It should look like creamy peanut butter when you are done mixing.

• In a large bowl, whisk milk, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg to blend.  Make sure the cinnamon is dispersed throughout the mixture.

Is this upside down?

• In 2 large nonstick skillets (or a griddle), melt half the brown sugar mixture in one skillet and the other half in the other skillet on medium high heat. 
• Dip bread slices in egg mixture, letting each slice soak in the mixture for 30 sec or so.  My bowl was large enough I could do 2 bread slices at a time.

I used an 8x8 glass baking dish to do this over a bowl.

• Add 4 slices to each skillet (or whatever your skillet can hold) where the butter-sugar mixture should be slightly sizzling.

See the brown sugar butter mixture sizzling?

You can see that I used the whole loaf (one end was already eaten by my husband)

• Cook until side is a deep brown.  The butter & sugar will carmelize on the bread.  This will be 3-5 min. per side.
• Remove to plates and dust with powdered sugar.
• Serve hot.  This is when the outside has a slight crunch and the inside is moist and tender.  If you wait for too long, the French toast won't taste as good.
• Drizzle with maple syrup, if desired.