Mother's Day Brunch - Day Before

Tomorrow will be my first official hosting of a 'brunch' - am excited to host guests for a meal other than dinner.

menu

French Toast
Bacon
Turkey Bacon (for mom)
scrambled eggs
Orange Juice
Coffee & Tea
Fruit Tray (Courtesy of my sister Laura)
Freshly Baked croissants (also from Laura)

Tonight I did the pre-prep for the French toast. When I read this recipe I just couldn't resist - it had such great feedback and sounded so delicious!!

INGREDIENTS

1 (1 pound) loaf French bread, cut diagonally in 1 inch slices

8 eggs

2 cups milk (substituted with non-lactose milk for mom)

1 1/2 cups half-and-half cream (instead, substituted with 1 cup of non-lactose milk for mom)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 cup butter

1 1/3 cups brown sugar

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

Here's what was involved with pre-prep;

Weighed the bread – not sure how much 1lb of bread works out to be, so pulled out the scale.

Buttered a 9x13 inch baking dish (my bread must have been too big because I needed an extra 8x8 baking dish too).

Arrange the slices of bread in the bottom (my kitchen assistant suggested I try making some in the form of ‘French Toast STICKS’… so gave it a shot. The others are half-slices of the bread).

In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Pour over bread slices, cover, and refrigerate overnight.

Tomorrow I will just need to;

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small saucepan, combine butter, brown sugar and corn syrup; heat until bubbling.

Pour over bread and egg mixture.

Bake in preheated oven, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

Pumpkin Bread

INGREDIENTS

1 can (15 ounces/2 cups) pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
3 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour
1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts (I used almonds)
1/2 cup raisins, if desired (I used these - love raisins!)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease bottom a 9x5x3 loaf pan with shortening.

2. Stir together pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs in large bowl (I used my Cuisinart food processor with the beaters for this once I was done using the metal blade on it to chop the almonds, it ended up being a lot of liquid - too much actually, so best to do it in a large bowl with beaters or use a stand-up mixer if you have one) Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pans.

3. Bake for 1 hr 10min -1hr 20min or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes. Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pans and place top side up on wire rack. Cool completely, about 2 hours, before slicing. Wrap tightly and store at room temperature up to 4 days, or refrigerate up to 10 days.TIP: Greasing just the bottoms of the pans helps to form a gently rounded top. If the sides are greased, edges of the loaf may have ridges.

Click here for the original recipe