Christmas French Toast Casserole

Every year at Christmas a friend asks me to post my Christmas French Toast Casserole recipe. Here it is.

This is exactly how I do it:

Making the French Toast

1) Grease inside of casserole dish

2) Tear up bread (white or French ideally) into 2-inch sized pieces and place evenly in casserole dish

3) Make a double or triple batch of your usual french toast mixture liquid

4) Pour over bread, using a fork to gently squish the bread all down into the mixture

5) Layer frozen mixed berries over the top OR cut an apple into slices horizontally and place a single layer of apple slices with the cores cut out (it can be fun to use your mini-cookie cutters to remove the cores in a festive shape.)

6) Take your stick of butter out of the freezer and use your cheese grater to grate too much butter on top

7) Swear because you forgot to put on the cinnamon, and then figure it’ll be just as good on top of the butter and sprinkle that on (you may skip if you do the berries, I can never decide if I like the berries and the cinnamon.)

8) Cover in saran wrap and put in fridge overnight

9) Christmas morning preheat oven to 375, then increase heat to 400, then worry it’ll burn and go back down to 375

10) Take saran wrap off and cover dish with foil

11) Bake 20 min covered with foil (this is when you make the compote)

12) Remove foil and bake 10 minutes

13) Check casserole and remark to your husband how you swear it didn’t take this long last year. Increase oven temp to 400

14) Bake 20 min and then say “shit!” and run to the kitchen and remove from oven

15) Serve to universal acclaim. Ignore parts burned to bottom of dish.

(Oven temps and cooking times may vary)

Making the Compote

1) Compote is 2ish cups of frozen mixed berries

2) Add lots of sugar but not more than a cup

3) As you go along you can add some water if it isn’t thin enough

4) Stir stir stir over low to medium heat. No boiling!

5) Remove from heat and let cool a bit

6) Strain through your strainer. You kind of have to smoosh it through with the back of a spoon

7) Put in measuring cup because your actual nice little serving pitcher is out in the garden being a bulldozer

8) Serve slightly warmed to pour over French toast in place of maple syrup.