The BEST French Toast
This French Toast is incredibly easy to make with just a few ingredients and turns out perfect every single time. Serve it with some pure maple syrup or fresh fruit for a simple breakfast or brunch!
Are you more of a savory or sweet person when it comes to breakfast? To be honest, I tend to fall somewhere in the middle. While I love a good buttermilk biscuit, I also love banana muffins and scones. But today’s French toast recipe is by far one of my favorite sweeter options.
One of the things that I love about this French toast is that it’s incredibly easy to throw together. This recipe also uses simple ingredients that you likely have in your pantry and refrigerator. You can even scale it down to make enough for two people or scale it up to make a larger batch for a crowd.
This French toast works well with just about any kind of bread, so you can use whatever you have on hand. If you’re looking for a way to use up some old bread, this easy recipe is perfect for that too!
Ingredients For This Recipe
To make this French toast, you’ll start with some stale bread, eggs, heavy whipping cream, whole milk, granulated sugar, vanilla extract, and ground cinnamon. Let’s break down each ingredient and why they’re important to this recipe:
- Bread: You can really use any kind of bread that you prefer, but it needs to be stale. I’ve found that leaving my bread out overnight so that it’s dry ensures that the French toast turns out perfect and not mushy. I really love to use Texas toast because it’s thick and soaks up the egg mixture well.
- Heavy Whipping Cream & Whole Milk: I’ve tested this French toast with just milk and it was just okay. I’ve found that using a combination of heavy whipping cream and whole milk ensures a rich and delicious texture.
- Granulated Sugar: There are only 2 tablespoons of sugar in this recipe to add a little sweetness.
- Vanilla Extract & Ground Cinnamon: These two ingredients add a little extra flavor to the French toast and really take it to the next level.
How To Make French Toast
To make this French toast, you’ll want to start out by heating a griddle or skillet to medium heat. As I mentioned earlier, I suggest leaving your bread out overnight so that it’s stale. This will help ensure that your bread soaks up the mixture and prevent it from turning out soggy.
Next, you’ll whisk together the eggs, heavy whipping cream, whole milk, and vanilla extract in a large shallow dish until they’re well combined. In a separate small mixing bowl, whisk together your sugar and ground cinnamon then mix it into the egg mixture. I find that whisking the sugar and ground cinnamon separately helps the cinnamon disperse better and you don’t end up with huge clumps.
Once the mixture is ready, you’ll dip your bread into it and let it soak on each side for about 30 seconds. This will help the bread absorb more of the custard so that it’s nice and creamy in the center and not dry.
Then, just place the soaked bread on your heated skillet or griddle and cook until it’s golden brown on each side. Once all of the slices of bread are cooked, you can serve the French toast with some fresh fruit, pure maple syrup, or dust it with a little powdered sugar and enjoy!
FAQ’s
What’s the best kind of bread to use?
For this recipe, I really love to use Texas toast because it’s thick but still soaks up the egg custard mixture really well. I’ve tested this recipe with French bread and sandwich bread, both worked great! Some other great options are challah or brioche bread.
How can I prevent it from becoming soggy?
Here’s my number one tip – always use stale bread. I suggest placing the bread out the day before and let it sit out overnight to dry. This will help the bread easily soak up more of the egg mixture without it becoming soggy.
What can I use in place of the heavy whipping cream and whole milk?
You may replace the heavy whipping cream and whole milk in this recipe for 1 cup of half and half. You can also use just whole milk for this recipe, but keep in mind that it won’t be quite as rich.
Baking Tips
- Make sure to use stale bread for this recipe, I prefer to set my bread out the night before so that it’s dry the next morning.
- I suggest mixing the egg mixture together in a shallow baking dish. This will make it much easier to dip the bread and you can soak several slices at once!
- Let the bread soak for about 30 seconds on each side so that it can soak up the egg mixture. If you’re using a thicker or denser bread, I suggest letting it soak a bit longer on each side. If you’re using a bread that’s not as thick, like regular sandwich bread, you’ll only need to soak each side for about 20 seconds.
More Homemade Breakfast Recipes
- Blueberry Muffins
- Homemade Cinnamon Rolls (my grandmother’s recipe!)
- Blueberry Banana Baked Oatmeal
- Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
Video Tutorial
The BEST French Toast
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs lightly beaten
- ½ cup (120 ml) whole milk
- ½ cup (120 ml) heavy whipping cream
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 8-10 slices day-old Texas toast
Instructions
- Preheat a griddle to medium heat, or place a skillet over medium heat, and spray with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a shallow baking dish, whisk together the eggs, whole milk, heavy whipping cream, and pure vanilla extract until fully combined.
- In a separate small mixing bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar and ground cinnamon. Add the cinnamon sugar mixture to the egg mixture and whisk until fully combined.
- Soak each slice of bread in the egg mixture for 30 seconds on each side and allow any excess to drip off in the dish. Place the soaked bread on the griddle or skillet and cook until golden brown on each side.
- Serve with maple syrup, fresh fruit, or your toppings of choice.
Lovely recipe!! Can’t wait to try it some time!!!
Thank you, Zaynab! Hope you enjoy the French toast if you try it!
Absolutely delicious!!! Had it for dinner with a side of fresh fruit, coffee and juice. Made for a light and satisfying meal. Thank you so much for posting.
So happy to hear that it turned out great for you, Barbara!
I don’t use half and half, whipping cream or whole milk. I use 1% lactaid milk and have cans of Pet evaporated milk which I think is sweeter than reg milk. Do you think that these could be used instead?
Either one would be fine. The evaporated milk may be a little better, since it’s richer than just milk.
Can you use brown sugar in place of granulated sugar?? What do think?
I think that would be fine.
I’m trying this today.
thank you.
bit I didn’t get what I can replace whipping cream with
Hi, Felicia! You can replace it with milk or use 1 cup of half and half. I have notes in the post and recipe for replacing the heavy cream 🙂
How much milk n heavy whipping cream..your recipe doesn’t say..50 / 50
You use 1/2 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream. They’re both listed in the recipe card 🙂
This is almost the exact same recipe that I’ve been using for 35+ years, but the big difference and to take it next level is to cut back the vanilla extract to 1 tsp (and I use Mexican vanilla) and to add 1 to 1 1/2 tsp of almond extract. (Depends on your preference and also some almond extracts are stronger than others)
Also, our local grocery store has their own store brand of syrup – which has a faint aftertaste of Amaretto (no, it doesn’t actually have Amaretto or almond anything in it) but it rocks with the French toast!
I’ve made it almost just like that for 40 years, except I add nutmeg and soak it less. I suspect you’re french toast is asweome! Great article ?
You did a great job explaining a classic recipe with measurements and explanations for why you use a particular ingredient. I would leave out all of the sugar because you serve with maple syrup. You don’t need both.
Perfect French Toast! I used my immersion blender to evenly blend the cinnamon. Worked like a charm. To many happy weekend French Toast breakfasts! Thank you.
My family loves this recipe! I always use half and half and it’s perfect! Have you ever tried saving the batter in the fridge when you ran out of bread? Wondered if it keeps well.
I think it would keep for a day or two, but I wouldn’t keep it for much longer than that.
Hi ~ Just wanted to say that I ran into your website this morning while searching for a good scone recipe. After reading all the reviews I have printed your recipe out in hopes to use it this weekend.
Well… then I made the ‘mistake’ of clicking on the Browse Recipes button and find myself a couple of hours older.
Regarding this recipe for French Toast… it never occurred to me to use something richer than milk. Mixing in the whipping cream seems brilliant. Will be trying this also. But I also wanted to mention a type of french toast that we occasionally make in this house. We do not have a recipe for it.. just sort of made it up.. and not even sure if we do it the same each time… but it is consistently good. We use pumpernickel bread, and after soaking it in the cinnamon/milk, vanilla juice we drizzle maple syrup on the down side of the bread before flopping it down on the melted butter. We repeat with the syrup when we flip. The pumpernickel bread gives off a nice, not so sweet flavor, and the syrup sort of caramelizes into something wickedly good. I would love to see someone (hint, hint) develop this into a ‘real’ recipe in order to attain consistent results. It is always good… but not always the same… the undisciplined way we go about it. Anyway… thanks much for some kitchen inspiration and I have bookmarked this site.
Thank you for the suggestion, Terry! I will have to give your french toast recipe a try, it sounds fantastic! I hope you enjoyed the scones if you got a chance to try them this weekend!
We love this recipe, Thank you!
Really great and easy. I had 2% milk instead of whole milk, not my choice, and no heavy cream so I used all half and half. I baked it in the oven at 350 until it was golden and served it with blueberry compote and maple syrup. And brown sugared bacon! Similar to my mom’s recipe only richer. It’s our breakfast treat!
This is a very good recipe. I found it by typing in “french toast and heavy whipping cream” after seeing a recipe using heavy whipping cream and blood red oranges by Martha Stewart. This was a great substitute, save the blood red oranges. I used wheat bread and more egg whites but it was very yummy.