I’ve never had a French toast with alcohol in it

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Time: 25 minutes

I recently made a recipe where I ended up having leftover French bread (Italian Beef). Almost every time I’ve made French toast I ended up using non-stale non-french bread, so I thought it was the perfect time to try it. This recipe is from a website new to me. I had never heard of Food 52 before, but the recipe had 5 stars at the time that I found it. I typically prefer my French toast to be on the crispier side, so I was hoping that this recipe might deliver that.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

Although I forgot the salt in the picture, nothing was omitted from this recipe.

1. The recipe calls for brown eggs, but there is no difference between brown eggs and white eggs. Not sure why this distinction is made instead of the typical size indicator. Don’t worry if you're shells are pale, they’re the same on the inside.

2. I had never made French toast with rum before. Interestingly, this recipe calls for a dollop of the stuff. Had no idea how much a dollop is, so this measurement can vary widely kitchen to kitchen.

3. Like I said earlier, the bread that I used for this recipe was from another recipe. Fresh, that bread is really good on its own. I will say that this bread was quite a bit older than the day that the recipe recommend. Mine was closer to a week old.

Tools:

• Griddle or skillet

Cooking Review:

Mixing Soak: 8 minutes

This recipe is another very simple one, so you could probably do everything in less time than what I did. It’s really just mixing all the ingredients and soaking the sliced bread for as long as you want. I recommend going light on the rum ‘dollop’, which will be discussed more later. If you like your toast less soft, soak each piece for less time. I soaked mine for 20-30 seconds per side.

‘Toasting’: 16 minutes

After soaking the bread, I added them to a buttered and preheated griddle. On the first batch, I cooked each side for 4 minutes. The toast tends to curl up a little bit around the edges after being flipped, so you might want to press them down on side two for more even browning. The first batch was a little quicker, taking 3 minutes per side before being done.

Analysis:

I’m not a big fan of alcohol in any capacity, so the forward rum flavor wasn’t my favorite. This is why I said to be conservative with the rum, but if you like that flavor maybe you’ll like this recipe more than I did. Otherwise, the French toast isn’t very sweet and definitely benefits from some maple syrup to cut the rum flavor. The texture if very custardy, soft all the way through. All in all, this recipe didn’t grab me at any point. I’m going to give it a 6/10. It’s very easy and I can definitely see alcohol fans appreciating the rum flavor. Plus, if you like your French toast on the soft side, this is a good recipe. Unfortunately, I fall in neither one of those categories.