Baked Stuffed French Toast

Mother’s Day is right around the corner! Like any self-respecting mother, I plan to lounge in bed until ten painting my toenails and catching up on celebrity gossip magazines. I’ll call my BFF Keri and talk for hours. I’ll stare at the ceiling. I’ll think about things I haven’t thought about in years.

Important stuff like the color I want to paint my bedroom walls and whether or not I should buy hiking boots.

My clean-faced children will bring me a plate of perfectly poached eggs and side of toast. My husband will follow with a hot cup of coffee (don’t forget the cream) and the Sunday newspaper. They will promptly file out of the room and leave me alone with the sweet sound of silence. Maybe I’ll go for a long run. Maybe I’ll take a long nap.

It’s Mother’s Day! I can do whatever I want!

This is usually the point when I wake up from this beautiful dream to the baby’s soaked diaper and the 4-year old’s pleas for breakfast, to drag the groggy 6-year old out of bed and leave for church at the exact moment when we should be pulling into the parking lot. I’ll eat a bowl of yogurt and gulp down a cup of coffee in the car, while telling my husband that next week we will pull it together and be on time.

While the dream version sounds pretty amazing, I wouldn’t change the real deal for the world. Mother’s Day is a pretty simple event around our house. It’s church and family. Simple cards and lots of cuddles, food and laughter. Hopefully sunshine. Maybe a bike ride.

You might be hosting a family brunch or just feeding your own crew. Or maybe you aren’t doing any of those things but just want a good breakfast with leftovers for the rest of the week. If you are bobbing around in one of those boats, this is the recipe you should make: Baked Stuffed French Toast.

I ripped it out of a recent issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. This simple recipe pulls five ingredients together to create a delicious French toast that’s more savory than sweet.

I’m not normally interested in baked French toast recipes because they always seem too gloppy and mushy and sugary. This recipe is none of those things. The sturdy bread soaks up the egg mixture without turning soggy and tucked inside is a savory mixture of salty ham and melted cheese. You can drizzle the stuffed French toast with maple syrup or serve it with mustard. Or just let your kids pick it up and eat it with their hands.

It’s kind of like simple French Toast meeting those fancy Croque Monsieur Sandwiches. Now that is a combination worth waking up for.

And the best part is that this recipe is meant to be made ahead of time. Prep everything the night before and let it soak overnight in the fridge. The next morning you simply pull it out of the fridge 30 minutes before you need to pop it in the oven. I actually prepped everything in the morning and served it for dinner, along with a fruit salad and a green salad with my favorite Lemon-Garlic Vinaigrette.

The original recipe calls for eight slices of bread in a 9×13 pan. That wasn’t happening with the size of my bread, so I compromised with seven pieces in a 10×16 pan. Do what works for you, but you basically want to cut thick slices of bread and use your biggest baking pan.

The original recipe also calls for Gruyere cheese, which is pretty pricey. I used Swiss cheese instead, but you could use almost any cheese and still get delicious results.