This can be prepared the night before and then grilled in the morning to produce an elegant-looking breakfast or brunch. Fresh strawberries were utilized, and I just pureed them to use in the sauce. Add whipped cream over top.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 45 mins |
| Servings: | 5 |
| Yield: | 5 servings |
Ingredients
- ½ cup sliced almonds (Optional)
- 1 (10 ounce) package frozen strawberries – thawed, drained, and juice reserved
- water as needed
- ½ cup white sugar
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup milk
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 1 ½ teaspoons white sugar
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 loaf Italian bread
- 1 tablespoon butter, or as needed
Instructions
- Cook and stir almonds in a skillet over medium high heat until fragrant and toasted, 3 to 5 minutes.
- Add enough water to reserved strawberry liquid to equal 1 cup liquid.
- Stir 1/2 cup sugar and cornstarch together in a saucepan over medium heat. Gradually stir strawberry liquid into sugar mixture; cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is clear and thick, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir strawberries and almonds into sugar mixture.
- Beat cream cheese, 2 tablespoons sugar, and vanilla extract together in a bowl. Whisk milk, eggs, 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg together in a bowl.
- Slice bread at 1 1/2-inch intervals about 3/4 of the way through. Cut a slit in the center of each slice to form a pocket, and fill each pocket with 1 rounded tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture. Separate slices from loaf by cutting each slice the rest of the way through the loaf.
- Dip bread slices in egg mixture to coat completely.
- Melt butter on a griddle over medium-high heat. Working in batches, cook bread slices on preheated griddle until golden brown, 2 to 5 minutes per side. Serve French toast with strawberry-almond mixture.
- The nutrition data for this recipe includes the full amount of the bread-coating and strawberry sauce ingredients. The actual amount of the coating and strawberry sauce consumed will vary.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 802 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 107 g |
| Cholesterol | 171 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 6 g |
| Protein | 23 g |
| Saturated Fat | 14 g |
| Sodium | 998 mg |
| Sugars | 33 g |
| Fat | 32 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This was like having brunch in a fancy bistro! However,I discovered I’m not a big fan of cream cheese in french toast and it was a smite too rich for my tastes.
My three boys love this recipe
I am only rating the sauce part of this recipe. I needed a strawberry sauce recipe for a cheese cake and only had a 16oz bag of frozen strawberries so I did a search for frozen strawberries and this is the recipe that came up. I thawed the berries overnight in a colander set over a bowl and in the morning I only had 1/2 cup of drained liquid. Because my bag was 16oz I had to add 50 percent more to the rest of the recipe. So I added a cup of water and worried that the strawberry flavor would be diluted too much, but I needn’t have worried because the sauce was full of strawberry flavor. I needed to cook it much longer, on medium heat as specified, to get the liquid clear and thick- about 10 minutes. Then I added the strawberries (which I had cut in half because they were pretty big) and cooked an additional 10 minutes until it reached the consistency I wanted. It was a very pretty red color. Both my mother and I tasted it and found it quite sweet, so if I try this recipe again I will try cutting the sugar down, and/or replacing some of it with honey, which is in my favorite blueberry sauce. We definitely tasted more sugar than berries. I think some fresh chopped strawberries (as the submitter mentioned) would improve the sauce quite a bit. Perhaps also a touch of orange peel or replacing a small amount of the liquid with orange juice would be a nice addition. Finally, I left the almonds out of the sauce, but think they could be nice sprinkled on top.*** This also looks beautif