Baked Eggnog French Toast

It’s a Christmas morning tradition in our home to have a big gorgeous breakfast together. For many years I’ve made french toast, eggs, bacon, sausage etc. for my family. This year, I decided to try something that would keep me away from all that flipping bread over a hot griddle. I’ve tried overnight french toast before, but didn’t want to go that route since I had zero time before Christmas day to prepare it. So, I kind of made up this version – and included some eggnog to give it a holiday twist. For the rest of the year, I’ll just use all milk instead of part nog. The great thing is that it came together in about 10 minutes, and then baked while we were reading the Christmas story and opening gifts. Easy and delicious.

I enjoyed a couple servings of this and didn’t feel it needed any topping at all. The sugar cinnamon on top got a little crunchy and was just delicious. My kids and hubby all had it with syrup though. It would be good also with a dusting of powdered sugar.

5 cups, thick cut french bread, cut into 2 inch squares
4 eggs
1 cup eggnog
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup white sugar, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
2 tablespoon butter, softened

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Generously butter an 8×8 inch baking pan.
Place the bread in layers in the pan, cutting bread as needed to fill the entire pan. (I did three layers, all the way to the top of the pan.) In a large bowl, beat together eggs, milk, eggnog, 2 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, salt and vanilla. Pour egg mixture over bread. Dot with butter; let stand for 10 minutes.
Combine remaining 2 tablespoons sugar with 1 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over the top. Bake in preheated oven about 60 minutes, until top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.