Oh Yes We Did: French Toast Crunch™-Coated French Toast

When I go out to brunch or start planning a brunch menu, the first thing I think of is French toast. It’s simply my favorite. So when I heard French Toast Crunch, a cereal from my childhood, was coming back, I knew immediately I had to transform it into French toast magic. (Because it’s not possible to have too much of a good thing.)

The magical properties of this French toast are owed in large part to the coating of crushed-up French Toast Crunch. I love this cereal! I have vague childhood memory of eating French Toast Crunch pretending to be a giant in a world of tiny toast, because each teeny piece of cereal looks like a real piece of toast. It’s probably the cutest cereal to ever exist.

It’s good for spelling things like “toast,” great at being breakfast cereal or living life in as a snack mix for emergencies or, as you probably guessed, coating French toast.

While I usually make my French toast out of home-baked bread, this time I bought a lovely loaf of challah bread. I sliced it into thick slices, tossed a tea towel over it and let it dry out a bit overnight. And let me tell you, using challah changed everything. It’s chewy, flavorful and doesn’t fall apart like I fear brioche might. Coating it with crushed cereal adds a hit of crispy goodness that takes this already dreamy challah French toast up like seventeen notches. But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Here’s how this doubly good French toast is made. (The complete recipe, including measurements and ingredients, is below!) To start, crush up four to five cups of French Toast Crunch, using a food processor. You can also place the cereal in large re-sealable plastic bag, and roll over it with rolling pin until crushed.

Then, in a 2-quart saucepan, heat milk, 1/2 cup of the cream, the brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of the vanilla and the cinnamon just until tiny bubbles form around outer edge. Remove from heat and let stand 10 minutes until it’s fully infused with the cinnamon-sugar goodness.

Beat eggs into the warm milk. Then douse bread into the milk mixture.

Coat it in cereal crumbs. Then, in a small bowl, place remaining 1/2 cup cream and remaining 1/4 cup cereal and set aside.

In 10-nonstick skillet, melt 1 teaspoon of the butter over medium heat. Fry the coated slices of challah in butter, ‘til golden brown, about 3 to 4 minutes on each side, adding butter to the skillet as needed. Continue with all the French toast, keeping the cooked pieces warm on cookie sheet in 200° F oven.

While the French toast is cooking away, strain the cereal from cream; discard cereal. Beat cream with remaining 1 teaspoon vanilla and the powdered sugar until stiff peaks form. You now have cereal-milk whipped cream! 

Pull the French toast from the oven and plate it up with the cereal milk whipped cream, fruit and powdered sugar. Dig in, and enjoy what’s sure to be your new favorite weekend brunch treat.