French toast traybake
- Prepare
- less than 30 mins
- Cook
- 10 to 30 mins
- Serve
- Serves 4–6
- Dietary
- Nut-freeVegetarian
This oven-baked French toast is a revelation – it fills your kitchen with the irresistible scent and warmth of cinnamon and baking, and more practically, it’s a great way to use up bread which is slightly past its best.
By Rukmini Iyer
Ingredients
For the traybake
- 4 medium free-range eggs
- 200ml/⅓ pint full-fat milk
- 70g/2½oz caster sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 400g/14oz sliced sourdough or robust bread, cut into 5cm/2in squares
- 200g/7oz fresh or frozen blueberries
For the topping
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp caster sugar
To serve
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6. To make the traybake, whisk together the eggs, milk, caster sugar and cinnamon in a jug. Arrange half the squares of bread in the bottom of a medium roasting tin, then pour over half the egg mixture. Scatter with half the blueberries, then arrange the remaining bread squares on top, slightly overlapping (these will catch and get wonderfully crisp in the oven.) Pour over the remaining egg mixture and lightly squash the bread down with a spoon to help the egg mixture soak in.
To make the topping, mix the cinnamon and caster sugar together in a small bowl, then scatter this and the remaining blueberries evenly over the bread.
Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the top is golden brown and crisp, and the inside is still wobbly. Eat hot from the oven, with crème fraîche alongside.
Recipe tips
This is best eaten the day it is made, but you can prep the whole dish in advance before cooking, refrigerate it the night before and bake it the following morning if you wish. No one will object if you throw a few chocolate chips in with the blueberries.
