Feeding frenzy

It's been awhile since we've had a real "eating" weekend, but this past one was. Saturday we attended a farm day up in Amish country, and ate until we were ready to pop. Sunday was our baby shower with Matt's work, which shaped up to have a Mexican theme. (The baby shower, that is, not the workplace.) We brought Puerco Pibil over rice, along with Matt's salsa. Others brought fajita fixings, and things like chips and guacamole. As if that weren't going to be enough of a gut buster, I woke up that morning with a hankering for baked blueberry French toast. I don't know that I've ever actually had such a dish, but it had crystallized in my mind that that was just what I wanted: French toast, but baked (I don't especially like making regular French toast because of the time and inherent inconsistency involved); blueberries; and maybe some cream cheese. I was fairly disappointed in my search for a recipe on the internet, and so I improvised and came up with my own.

I used Smitten Kitchen as a reference point for the bread-eggs-milk ratio and baking temperature, and mixed up a filling made of thawed frozen blueberries, cream cheese, and a little maple syrup to go in the middle. It wound up a little stiff, and if I'd been thinking I would have added in maybe half a cup of blueberry juice (which we actually have in our fridge), but I wasn't. Here's how we did it:

Baked Blueberry French Toast

Butter (a few tablespoons)
3 eggs
3 cups of milk
Splash of vanilla
2-3 T sugar
1 loaf of bakery bread, sliced or cubed
6-12 oz frozen or fresh blueberries
1 brick cream cheese (I think I probably could have gotten away with less)
1 T sugar or maple syrup
Optional: 1/4-1/2 cup blueberry juice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in the bottom of a 13x9" pan. Combine eggs, milk, vanilla, and sugar and pour enough in to cover the bottom of the 13x9 pan. Arrange slices or cubes to form a layer on the bottom of the pan. Pour over enough egg and milk mixture to cover. Combine blueberries, cream cheese, sugar or maple syrup, and blueberry juice, if using; pour or spread over bottom layer of bread. Arrange remaining bread to cover and pour on remaining egg and milk. Bake 30-45 minutes until golden. Serve with maple, blueberry, or any other kind of syrup.

Personally, I thought it was even better the next day. Most recipes for baked French toast call for letting it sit overnight, which I think has the effect of keeping the egg/milk mixture ensconced within each slice of bread as opposed to forming custard around the bread, but there are certainly worse things in life (like waiting till the next day for something you really want now). It's not a perfect recipe, but I'd definitely make it again.