Chocolate and Banana Overnight French Toast

Perfect Pairing:  Overnight softened butter

I must have a thing for overnight breakfast items.  Let me demonstrate.

Overnight Muesli (fun fact, I don’t think I have EVER spelled muesli correctly on the first attempt)

Overnight French Toast

Overnight Cornbread Strata

Overnight All Purpose Breakfast Casserole

I love being able to get the prep work done the night before, and breakfast is ready for the oven the next morning.  Often, I will prepare breakfast while I am making dinner and enlist family and friends to do the cleanup.  It is a good system.

I needed to add one more overnight recipe to the breakfast lineup, Chocolate and Banana French Toast.  It is as good as it sounds.

It is made of layers of cinnamon raisin bread, bananas, chocolate chips, and is topped with an oatmeal streusel (also never get the spelling of that right on the first try).  How can you go wrong with those ingredients? 

You could easily swap out the cinnamon raisin bread for just cinnamon if you don’t like raisins in your breakfast.  I know that is pretty common.  I personally really liked it with the raisins.  You can top with syrup, but it hardly needs it.  Gilding the lily?

The oatmeal streusel is made with oatmeal, brown sugar, and softened butter.  It is really important for the butter to be soft when you mix this up.  I would suggest putting the butter on the counter the night before when you are prepping.  It will be the perfect consistency in the morning.  There have been many times I have tried to speed up the process by using the microwave, but I inevitably forget and end up with half melted, half softened butter.

One year ago on Perfecting the Pairing:  Raisin Bran Muffins

Two years ago on Perfecting the Pairing:  Best Ever Blueberry Muffins

Chocolate and Banana Overnight Baked French Toast

Lindsay at Perfecting the Pairing

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

·        18 slices cinnamon raisin bread

·        ½ cup chocolate chips

·        2 bananas, sliced

·        3 cups whole milk

·        8 eggs

·        2 tsp cinnamon

·        1 tsp vanilla

·        ¼ cup butter, melted

·        1/3 cup sugar

·        ½ cup butter, softened

·        ½ cup brown sugar

·        ½ cup oatmeal (quick)

Directions:

Grease a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray.  Lay six slices of the cinnamon raisin bread on the bottom of the dish.  Evenly cover the bread with one sliced banana and half of the chocolate chips, about ¼ cup.  Top with another layer of bread and the remaining banana and chocolate chips.  Top with the final six pieces of bread.

In a large bowl combine the milk, eggs, cinnamon, ¼ cup melted butter, and sugar.  Whisk until totally combined.  Carefully pour the milk and egg mixture over the bread.  Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Put the ½ cup butter on the counter overnight to soften.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  While the oven is preheating, and the dish is coming to room temperature, make the oatmeal topping.  Combine the softened butter, brown sugar, and oatmeal in a small bowl.  Mix with a fork until evenly combined.  Crumble the oatmeal mixture over the top of the French toast.  Bake for 45-55 minutes or until set and crunchy on top.  *You may want to put a baking sheet under the dish to catch any overflow!

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