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

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Crunchy Stuffed French Toast

Perfect Pairing:  Double-sided grill pan

I love making a special breakfast on the weekends.  It is a pleasant departure from my Monday-Friday oatmeal at work routine.  This Crunchy Stuffed French Toast looks really fancy but is a cinch to make and is fairly healthy!

Years ago I travelled with my mom to a business event in Washington DC.  We stayed at a Marriott and I remember feeling very grown up having breakfast with her in the hotel restaurant.  We both had the crunchy French toast and it was scrumptious.  I am pretty sure we had it every day we were there.   I have seen it on Marriott’s menus through the years and always think of that trip with my mom where we first had the crunchy goodness.  This recipe was inspired by that trip, but I updated it to be “stuffed” with light cream cheese and preserves.  Using whole wheat toast, bran flakes and egg whites keep it light.  The cream cheese and preserves add lots of flavor, you almost don’t need syrup!

The Perfect Pairing for this recipe is a dual-sided grill pan.  The dual-sided part is that one side is the standard grill pan with ridges and the other is flat like a griddle.   Mine is cast iron and lies over the burners.  I am inclined to grill meat on my regular grill outside, but the griddle side of the pan is great for pancakes, French toast and grilled cheese if you are making multiple sandwiches.  Of course, this recipe can be made in a skillet if you don’t have a grill pan, you may just need to do a couple batches.  I hope you enjoy this tasty breakfast!

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