Something I Cooked: Custard French Toast

"You don't need a license to drive a sandwich."

As I write this post, I'm home with my sort-of-sick daughter, watching The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie for the second (of I'm not sure how many) consecutive times.

Having a sick 4-year-old is usually better than having, say, a sick 2-year-old, because I can stick her in front of the TV for most of the day and call it compassionate parenting rather than lazy neglect.

One drawback with a sick 4-year-old, particularly my 4-year-old, is that she's wants me to play with her dolls in her bedroom. The dolls part isn't the problem, but rather the fact that there's nowhere for me to sit in her tiny room, and I haven't had the muscular flexibility to sit comfortably on a floor (especially in a position we used to call "Indian style," but which my kids called "crisscross applesauce) since I was 6.

I convinced her to bring her various dolls and dollhouses into the living room, so I can play with her while sitting on the couch and, if I'm lucky, watching paternity-test results on Maury.

While Mrs. The Anthony Show was getting ready to venture out into an angry rain to drop off her last final paper of the semester, I took the opportunity to make use some French toast.

I'm rather a fan of Alton Brown's recipe. It's not very difficult (meaning there's no reason why you shouldn't try it out sometime), and it takes to a new level the soggy old French toast your used to. Let's see how it worked out this morning...

The original recipe calls for stale challah, but I like to use the bread that contains thin lines of cinnamon that resemble the veins in my lower legs.

For some reason, this photo didn't rotate correctly, but I'm too lazy to change it. Anyway, you combine the eggs and honey and half-and-half (I've used whole milk when I didn't have the half-and-half) to make a kind of custard. If you don't beat the eggs enough and mix it well into the dairy liquid, you'll end up with fried-egg fragments on your French toast, like one of those freaks who have like a undeveloped twin growing out of their necks.

After you dip the bread into the liquid, you let it dry a bit on a cooling rack. To lessen the carnage in the kitchen, I line a cookie sheet under the rack with newspaper.

See how I did that there?

Alton Brown suggests you brown the battered bread in a pan, but I have a nice All-Clad flat stovetop griddle thing, which works very well.

Nice 'n' brown. Alton Brown. (You can see the fried-egg thingy on the lower-left piece.) You can eat them now if you're a savage who can't wait an extra five minutes, but you're supposed to put them in a 375-degree oven for five minutes.

Put them right on your oven rack. If you're fortunate you'll be using a much cleaner oven than what you see here.

Five minutes later, they come out looking like little breakfast cakes. Which they are, in a way.

HELL YEAH BREAKFAST! Not too hard to make, and much more impressive than the tired old French toast your mom probably made.