French Toast

Serves a Party of 2

You guys are in for a real treat on this one, and as always I am filled with so much joy to be sharing it with you.

Just this past weekend I had the chance to put together French toast for the very first time, and that is not even the most exciting part. I reached a giant goal of mine, which was having the opportunity to partner with a lovely company that I buy from on the daily called Big Tree Farms. They sent me a couple of their products to sample, and the first one is their unrefined brown coconut sugar that I’ve been using for all of my baked goods and honestly even in my oatmeal most mornings. It also became a huge part of this french toast recipe and made my first time super easy and delicious.

One issue I had in mind before making this breakfast was how the heck to make French toast without doing it the traditional way using eggs and dairy, and I am super proud that my egg replacement worked out absolutely perfect and reassured me once again that you truly don’t need to use animal products in spectacular meals like this one. Instead, I mixed together some ground flaxseed, coconut sugar, cinnamon, oat milk, and a bit of arrowroot powder to be mixed and eventually used for the bread to be dipped in before frying on the pan in some plant based butter.

I also decided to get a little creative and whip up a sweet vanilla almond spread that was intended to mock a cream cheese texture, and it did just that. Made with soaked raw almonds, oat milk, vanilla extract, maple syrup, and squeezed lemon juice, it added such a nice touch and texture to the French toast and has me super excited to see what other tasty goodies it would work well on.

I wasn’t too sure of what kind of bread to use at first, but then immediately thought of City Bakery, which is a local bread shop and café in Asheville that had a literal perfect loaf of fluffy and braided bread that made for a pretty awesome experience and made me feel way better compared to if I just bought bread from the store.

Finally, I topped the french toast with sliced strawberries and a nice drizzle of maple syrup that has me extremelly excited to make it all over again.

Ingredients:

Place all ingredients aside from the butter, maple syrup, and strawberries in a large bowl a stir.

Let the mixture settle while you heat up a large pan on medium heat for a few minutes(the goal is to get that sucker super hot so that your french toast cooks fast and crispy).

Dip the slices of bread in the sugar mixture.

Drop down the plant based butter, then lay down your dipped bread for about 2 minutes on each side(be careful not to let it cook too long as it can be pretty each to burn).

To plate, I dashed the plate with additional cinnamon, laid dwn the toast, followed by the almond spread, strawberries, and maple syrup.

Ingredients for the Almond Spread:

Soak your almonds by either leaving them in a jar with water overnight, or simply bring a few cups of water to a boil, pour the water onto the almonds, then strain after around 3 to 5 minutes.

Next, add all ingredients to a high speed blender and pulse until creamy.