Weekends are for Fun and Eating, not Blogging.

I know, I know, I missed Friday again! In my defense, Jim and our friend Tim were here for the weekend, so I was a bit preoccupied. It was actually a pretty fun weekend. Yesterday we went to DC and ate at Ben's Chili Bowl before seeing The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which was fantastic) at the Landmark E Street Theater. Today I made a French toast bake for breakfast, which is the real focus of this post, because of course I love talking about food.

I found the recipe for the bake on Rach's Blog, via Pinterest, and decided that it would be great with pumpkin cream cheese, using a recipe from Better Homes and Gardens.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese:
8 oz softened cream cheese
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I used ground cinnamon & nutmeg, and eyeballed my amounts)
1/2 tsp vanilla

1) Beat all ingredients together until smooth. 2) Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 24 hours.

French Toast Bake:
Ingredients:
1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)

1 cup brown sugar

1 loaf Texas toast
4 eggs

1 1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Powdered sugar for sprinkling (I didn't use this)

1) Melt butter in microwave, add brown sugar and stir until mixed. 2) Pour butter & brown sugar mix into a 9x13 pan, make sure it covers the bottom. 3) Beat eggs, milk, and vanilla. 4) Lay first layer of Texas toast in pan. 5) Spread pumpkin cream cheese over the first layer of bread. 6) Cover first layer of bread with half of egg mixture (I think next time I might pour the egg mixture first, and then put the pumpkin cream cheese on the bottom of the second layer, if I use the pumpkin in the next batch). 7) Add second layer of Texas toast. 8) Coat second layer with remaining egg mixture (I also sprinkled cinnamon sugar over the top layer after pouring the egg mixture). 9) Cover and refrigerate overnight. 10) Bake at 350 for 45 minutes, covered for the first 30 minutes.  

It was great! My only problem was that for most of the pan, the brown sugar & butter base burned. I'm not sure if it's just my oven, because we've had some problems with it before, but either way, I think next time I might just melt the butter into the bottom of the pan and skip the brown sugar. Beyond that, it was definitely a hit with everyone here who ate it, and I'd recommend it to everyone who loves breakfast.

And here's a picture of Tim and me while we were waiting for the metro: