I know I've said before I'm not a fan of frying things but I didn't come up with this recipe to have something 'healthy', I came up with this recipe during my cookie recipe development and liked it so much I thought I would make it its own thing. My cookie recipe doesn't involve egg but I think it's rather necessary for French toast, it also explains the presence of the custard powder. Even though this recipe does contain egg I thought I would keep the custard powder in for the flavour and colour. I do think it's essential to have something with French toast but nothing too excessive, and as I'm baking the bread why not bake a fruit with it. Now I've used fresh apricots but you could easily swap them for other stoned fruit, I just think apricots are the best for this recipe as they can hold their own. Whilst I know typically cinnamon is the spice of choice for French toast, I adore cardamom and thought it would not only go well with apricots but would give the toast that something extra. So here we are, a breakfast that's simple to knock up but rather fancy, as in "I fancy another slice".
Serves 2
Hands-on Time 10 minutes plus chilling
Baking Time 25 minutes
Ingredients
2 Apricots
1 tbsp Honey (runny)
2 1/2 tsp Demerara sugar
1/2 tsp plus a pinch Ground cardamon
1/2 tsp plus a pinch Ground cinnamon
2 tbsp Custard powder
2 tbsp Caster sugar
2 Eggs, large
120ml Full-fat milk
2 tsp Vanilla extract
4 Slices of bread, thick cut
1 tbsp Icing sugar
Equipment
Knife
Baking dish
Baking sheet
Baking parchment
Small bowl
Wide-shallow bowl
Whisk
Sieve
Preheat your oven to 170°C/150°C(Fan)/325°F/Gas mark 3.
Halve and stone the apricots.
Place the apricots, cut sides up, into the baking dish.
Drizzle the honey over their craters followed by a sprinkling of a half teaspoon of demerara sugar.
Line your baking sheet with a piece of parchment.
In a small bowl mix together a half teaspoon each of the ground cardamon and cinnamon.
Add the custard powder and caster sugar to a wide-shallow bowl followed by one egg. Gently whisk together so they combine and there’s no large lumps before adding the second egg. Gently whisk again until combined.
Continue whisking and add the milk and vanilla extract.
Take a piece of bread, dunk one side into the egg mix before flipping it over and dunking the other. Ensuring the bread isn’t fully submerged, sprinkle a couple of pinches of the mixed spices on top. Pick the bread up, let the excess egg drip off, and place the slice spiced side down onto the lined sheet. Repeat with the remaining slices ensuring you don’t use all of the spice mix up.
Sprinkle the remaining spice over the tops of the bread followed by two teaspoons of demerara sugar.
Pop the sheet into the oven on a middle shelf and bake for 25 minutes until golden.
Whilst the apricots and bread are baking, mix a pinch of each spice with the icing sugar in the small bowl.
Remove the toast and apricots from the oven.
Plate the toast, followed by the apricots making sure you spoon any of the syrup over the fruit.
Sieve the spiced icing sugar like a light snow fall over the toast and fruit.
Enjoy!
