japanese french toast
I love French toast. Seriously, I do. There is something about those fluffy bits of bread, smothered in syrup. Be it American style, Hong Kong style or Japanese style, I love it. Thus, on a recent trip to Tokyo, I came across something called a French toast pan. It wasn't very expensive so I bought one home with me to give it a whirl.
You may be wondering, what is the difference between Japanese French toast and the regular kind. I guess it's just more fluffier and eggy than the other kind. That's the only way I can describe it.
The instructions were in Japanese. This is where Google Translate is a heaven! Translating it roughly, I got all my things together to see if I could recreate this at home. The pan was a small nonstick square. Good enough for one person.
The instructions required only five items:
1 egg
50 mL of milk
2 tsp of sugar
one slice of bread
butter as you want
I was to butter my pan as generously as I wanted. Then in a bowl, I mixed together the egg, milk and sugar. For something extra, I added a half tsp of vanilla because hey ... that stuff is the stuff of gods! I poured it into my pan and added my bread. I used Hoikkaido milk bread as it was thick. Perhaps try to find thicker sliced bread as it soak better. It said to let the bread soak for one hour on one side. Then flip it over to soak on the other side for another couple of hours or over night. Which I did. I popped it into my fridge and the next morning, all the egg mixture soaked into my bread.
The next morning, I pre-heated my oven. It didn't say at what temperature, so I went with 180C. Instructions said to bake it for 5 - 10 minutes until it fluffs up and then grill it for bit more until brown on top. I baked it for 10 minutes. Then slid the rack to the top of my oven to broil it for another minute to brown.
They came out spectacular! Sprinkled some powdered sugar on top and some sugar snowflakes that I had leftover from Christmas baking for a bit of cutenesss.
I drizzled it with some honey maple syrup that I bought in Japan. It's from the Sugi Bee company. Usually I buy their yuzu honey but this time I decided to try their honey maple and wow ... just goes great on pancakes and everything.
And to complete my morning, I made some hot chocolate and had these SUPER cute marshmallows I found. Cute, huh? I only used the heart shaped ones but the snowman are adorable, too.
