Dinner on the best day of summer

Heaven help us, this was SO good!
Wanna make some yourself? Of course you do! Here is the EASY PEASY recipe:
Stuffed French Toast Casserole
Ingredients
:: one fat loaf of french bread
:: 8 oz room temp cream cheese (we used pineapple flavored)
:: 4 eggs (or your favorite substitute)
:: 1 cup milk (or your favorite substitute)
:: 1/4 cup of sugar (or your favorite substitute)
:: a pinch of salt
:: cinnamon to taste
:: butter or some sort of spray oil to help release the goodness from the cooking pan
Mechanics of cooking
Prepare a casserole pan (9″ x 13″) by giving it a light coat of butter or cooking spray.
Basically, you will make little cream cheese sandwiches and cram them into your casserole dish, covering them w/ an egg mixture before baking.
You’ll need to cut the bread into roughly 1/2″ slices. My loaf cut into 14 pieces and these (stacked double) completely filled my casserole pan. Adjust your slicing to fit your pan/bread needs. I sliced two slices then fit them (stacked) into the pan. I left them in the pan as I continued to slice, stack and cram. It made filling the pan as completely as possible quite easy.
Once done w/ the slicing, take off the top layer of slices and smear each piece with cream cheese. Replace the top layer, cream cheese side down.
Now mix up the eggs, milk, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Get this mixture good and combined, using a blender or submersible blender if you need to. Now pour this over the “sandwiches”, making sure to saturate the tops and pouring in the nooks and crannies to let the bottom layer of bread get some eggy goodness too.
Cover and set aside for a bit to allow the bread to soak up all the egg mixture. You can make this the night before and have it waiting to pop in the oven for a quick brunch dish. Or make up during the day to serve for dinner.When ready to cook, bake the casserole uncovered in a 400ºF oven for 25-30 minutes or until the top is golden.
I may adjust this recipe just a wee bit. Our top slices came out a little dry and the bottom slices a little soggy. It really didn’t make a noticeable difference once it was on the plate with the berry topping. But I noticed as I was serving.
Topping
Really, you could use any topping of your choice. Today, we lucked into gorgeous fresh, local strawberries and blueberries at the market. SCORE! We bought a couple flats and mixed some up as our topping. I didn’t measure anything, just eyeballed. I did add about 1/8 of a cup of sugar to the berries just to get them macerating. I thought about adding a wee bit of vanilla or mint or coconut syrup or balsamic vinegar or maybe even some amerreto or rum, but didn’t. The berries were perfect enough on their own.
Maybe next time a plain cream cheese filling with a ginger peach topping? LOTS of possibilities!
How sweet are these?

