Baked Challah French Toast

I wanted to find something easy to make at Hom Nom's first anniversary so I could socialize with my friends instead of worrying about whether something was burning on the stove. And per usual, I turned to Smitten Kitchen for inspiration.  And she did not fail me! I found delicious and relatively easy ideas.  Among them was a boozy baked french toast. I'm not a fan of liquor in my breakfast food (unless it's a mimosa. that's a different story), so I left out the booze in this recipe.

Baked French Toast, borrowed from Smitten Kitchen

Serves 6 as a main course, but I served 10 people with this since I had other dishes

Ingredients

• 1 loaf of challah bread, cut into pieces
• 3 cups of whole milk
• 3 eggs
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Grease a 9x13 pan with butter.

Arrange the bread into tightly packed layers in the pan. 

Whisk together the milk, eggs, sugar and salt.  Pour over the bread, and then top with cinnamon and more sugar.  

Tightly wrap the pan with plastic wrap and let it soak in the fridge overnight.  This will allow the bread to absorb all the flavors. 

In the morning, preheat your oven to 425 degrees and bake for 30 minutes.  Cut into squares and serve with maple syrup and whipped cream.  

As Ina would say, "how is easy that?" All I had to do was preheat the oven while sipping on my said mimosa!