Baked French Toast

" Got a bunch of holiday guests this season? Try this. Whip up a batch of baked French toasts. Now, this is so fast. It takes about 20 minutes to throw together, and you can do it the night before, and then just pop it in the oven and you've got breakfast ready for your guests. Now, I love this because it starts with a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread, which happens to be my favorite. Cut it into cubes and then dry the cubes. Now, the quickest trick I find is to just spread the cubes into a large baking pan, and then bake it at 300 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes or until your bread is, you know, kind of dry and crisp. It's gonna, you know, have a little bit of softness to it, but mostly it's gonna be dry. Now, this is going to go into a 2-quart baking dish, and I like to use the rectangular, shallower dish just so that it bakes up nice and evenly, and this is a really easy recipe to remember. It's 4 eggs, 4 cups of milk, half-a-cup of sugar, a quarter-cup of butter, and then a teaspoon of cinnamon, because even though we are using that really flavorful bread, I think the more flavor, the better. And just whisk all of those ingredients together. Okay. That looks perfect. And now, the key is to just slowly pour it over the bread in your dish, and that bread is gonna soak up all that great flavor. And after you chilled it overnight, just simply pop it into a 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes. Once that comes out of the oven, you wanna let it stand and cool about 10-15 minutes, just so that it makes it a lot easier to slice and pull out each piece. So we're gonna just cut a piece out and I would say, you know, this serves about 8 people nicely; 6 people if you're really hungry, and you can get a really beautiful piece out for your guests. Now, there's so many different ways you can top this. I love just some pure maple syrup, classic French toast flavor; or if you really wanna jazz it up and add a little bit of health to it, you can add some strawberries and powdered sugar. So, I like to sprinkle it with a little bit of powdered sugar and that really just tops off that look, even more, and then garnish with some fresh strawberries. Add a little bit of sweetness to your next holiday brunch with this easy baked French toast. "