Apple-Cinnamon French Toast Bake

This was very “wet” after 40 minutes, so I ended up cooking another 13 minutes @ 400ºF. It was hard to cut with a fork because the bottom bread slices were so crusted. May be a result of the additional cooking time?? I’m not convinced you need a full stick of butter to top an 8x8-inch baking dish, so I could see cutting that amount back a bit. This has a lot of liquid so, perhaps, cut back the half-and-half and milk (do you really need both?) which might help with the wetness of the casserole after 40 minutes. I think adding some chopped pecans along with the apples between the bread layers might be a good idea (my husband’s comment) instead of all of them going into the topping. I used Egg Beaters instead of eggs, fat free half-and-half, and 1% milk in an effort to improve the nutritional breakdown. The serving size is small, but this is a very rich dish, so that worked for us. Do place the dish on a foil-lined baking sheet in case there’s any spillage (I had a little) which might be avoided with less liquid. If I were to make this again, I’d probably try cubing the bread to avoid those crusty whole bread slices on the bottom, not a lot of additional work, but keeping the two layers. It does taste very good, just a little tweaking involved to bump it up to 5 stars for me.

I used an 8x8 pan, as per the recipe, and a lot of liquid spilled over the edges onto the bottom of the oven, which set off the smoke alarm during the baking process. Next time I will either set the pan on top of a cookie sheet while baking or use a slightly bigger pan so that I don't end up with a big burnt mess in the oven. Otherwise, it tasted good.

This was a very easy recipe to put together It was easy and used old bread. Made my morning wonderful