5 Ingredient French Toast

French toast has always been my absolute favorite breakfast food, even though I'm actually not a huge breakfast person. Typically I like to stick to really light, very easily digestible foods in the morning, like yummy green smoothies, and I usually wait at least an hour after I wake up to eat anything so that my body has a chance to really get going. But sometimes you crave something a little more dense, a little more sweet, especially since I think that breakfast foods make fantasticly delicious meals for any time of day.

I'll admit that I was pretty disappointed when I realized that I could no longer eat my beloved French toast, and I lamented the fun memories of my daughter and I preparing it together. I'm not sure why I didn't immediately look up vegan recipes, because there's a vegan recipe for essentially everything these days, and most of the time they're really delicious. I think maybe I just assumed that there was no way to replicate a pure egg batter without buying actual vegan eggs, which only recently came out. But I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of recipes that were all a bit different. Some used either flax meal, or even chickpea flour as a thickener, and I found one that looked very promising which used ground chia seeds. Being that I'm a single mother with limited funds, and budgeting meals is essential for us, I don't generally keep these kids of ingredients on hand all of the time. I also didn't want to go out and buy a bag of something like chickpea flour that I was only going to use this one time. I also decided to try my hand at vegan French toast very much on a whim; it was completely spur of the moment, I just happened to have a ton of bananas that I really needed to use up. So I pretty much was just winging it with whatever ingredients I typically always have on hand.

I didn't think this was at all possible, but I genuinely love this recipe even more than traditional non-vegan French toast. This recipe is not nearly as dense as an egg batter, but still cooks really well. The edges have a fantastic crunchy crisp to them, while the center stays light and slightly chewy, without being mushy, or overly gooey. They're filling, but not overly filling, and the batter has a perfectly naturally sweet and creamy flavor. One of the best parts? You can use any leftover batter to drizzle right over top of your cooked French toast!

The trick with these is all in the frying. If your heat is turned up too high your French toast will burn on the outside while staying too mushy on the inside, and falling apart. Keeping your stove on low/medium heat, and allowing the toast to fry slowly, is the key to making perfectly browned French toast that won't stick or fall apart.

Because I threw this together so last minute, I only ended up taking one photo. But I definitely plan on making these again, so I'll update with more photos of the process.

Ingredients:

Makes about 4-5 slices

• 1/2 cup Almond Milk
• 1/3 cup raw Cashews, soaked for a few hours
• 1 small/medium Banana
• 1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• Coconut Oil or Vegan Butter (for greasing the pan)
• Your favorite thinly sliced bread (I use Sprouted Flax bread)

(Optional)

• 1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon Allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon Almond Extract

Method:

1. Place all of the ingredients into a blender, and blend on high until everything is smooth and creamy, with a consistency similar to a smoothie.
2. Oil your pan very well with either coconut oil, or vegan butter (I like Earth Balance soy free buttery spread). Allow your pan to heat up for a few minutes so that the heat is evenly distributed, this is very important for the batter not to stick.
3. Pour some of your batter onto a flat dish. It's important to not pour too much batter onto the dish so that you don't overly drench your bread. This batter cooks very differently than an egg batter, so it's easy to overly coat the bread, and come out with a soggy French toast.
4. Dip both sides of your bread lightly into the batter. Don't give the bread time to sit, as it will get too soggy, and fall apart. Place the freshly dipped slices into the pan.
5. Cook on one side for about 2-4 minutes, it will be ready to flip when you see the batter on the uncooked side starting to look more dry, and less liquid-y.
6. Flip and repeat cooking on the other side. Plate your French Toast, and top with some extra cinnamon, and your favorite fruit. Bananas go especially well since they're already in the batter. If you have any extra batter you can drizzle it right on top, and for a little extra sweetness you can take a few pitted dates that have been soaked in hot water, and blend that into the remaining batter. Drizzle with a bit of maple syrup and serve.