2008-02-27

French Toast

A couple of years ago, I tried a recipe for French Toast from one of the vegan boards, which was made with bananas and soy milk. The result was extremely disappointing, and The Kid rejected it outright. (I didn't blame him, since it was pretty gross. One of these days I'll do a "kitchen disasters" post. Believe me, there's plenty of material!) The failure was most likely more due to my technique, rather than the ingredients, so I decided to give it another shot last weekend, especially since I had some lovely homemade bread practically begging to be dredged, fried, and smothered in maple syrup.
I no longer have the original recipe, and a quick Google search produced dozens of vegan banana and soy milk French Toast recipes, so apologies in advance, and I'll be happy to give credit, if someone points me in the right direction!
Ingredients:
1/2 C vanilla soy milk

1 ripe (but not disgusting) banana

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

pinch nutmeg, preferably freshly grated

2 Tbs dairy free margarine

bread


Place 1 Tbs of margarine in a large skillet and preheat to medium high. Be sure to use a nonstick pan, very thin metal pancake turner, or both. There is very little fat in the ingredients going onto the skillet, so the the bread will try to become a permanent part of your cookware if you don't. Blend the soy milk, banana, and spices together. Don't mash this together with a fork (one of my previous mistakes), break out an electric blender or mixer for this one, or you will curse me and this recipe for the nasty lumps of banana that attach themselves to all the wrong places! Pour the mixture into a shallow bowl and place it near to the preheated skillet.
Gently put a slice of bread into the bowl. After a few moments to allow it to absorb some of the mixture, turn it over, let it absorb some more, then place in the skillet. Repeat until out of room in the pan. Watch very closely, and turn bread over once it is golden brown on the bottom. When the second side is browned, remove to a plate, and replace a small portion of margarine before putting the next slice of bread in the pan. Continue until out of banana/soy milk mixture.
This mixture easily covered six very thick slices of homemade bread, so I would expect it to cover six to eight thinner slices of commercial bread. Serve with maple syrup. Granted, The Kid would eat cardboard if it had enough maple syrup on it, but he really loved this new weekend breakfast treat and snarfed down two huge slices!
Update: I made this recipe today with commercial bread, and it sucked up more instead of less of the banana/soy milk mixture. Expect it to cover only 4-5 slices of commercial bread.

3 comments:

Sheltie Girl said...

This recipe for French toast looks fabulous. I have one child that will eat almost anything covered in maple syrup too and he loves French toast. I'll have to try making it again, as I haven't tried since going gluten free.

Sheltie Girl @ Gluten A Go Go

Sarah R said...

Yay! I have a new way to make FT! I used to use pumpkin puree, but a girl can only take so much before becoming orange!

PS: I tagged you for a meme over at my blog: http://yummysmells.blogspot.com/2008/02/baking-for-master-and-sticky-meme.html. Hope you don't mind!

Libby said...

Natalie, thank you! I hope your kid likes it, too. You can see I was working very hard not to spill the beans, "there just happened to be some magically appearing homemade bread in my kitchen..."

Sara, awesome! This is my very first meme. Sorry it's taken me so long to get to it, I've been too sick to type, cough, cough. *grin*