Growing up – one of the first recipes that I remember getting stuck in my head was one from Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Cookbook: Favorite Recipes from Mickey and His Friends. The friend that I was most partial to was Winnie the Pooh  – and as luck would have it – my good pal Winnie had a stupendous recipe for one of my favorite things in the world . . . french toast.

Well – unfortunately – I don’t know that recipe anymore – and I don’t have the book (although I did just hunt it down on Amazon – and am greatly considering dropping the big $2.90 to get it back into my collection) – but I do still have a great hankering for french toast . . . A quick aside here (if you can imagine) – a tidbit of wealthy knowledge – is that beside the french toast from this recipe – my fondest memories of french toast actually come from Denny’s . . . and – now that you know that – I can move on.

The other morning – I really wanted a whole different certain type of french toast . . . Thick french toast. You see – there is this restaurant here in Montclair that goes by the name of Raymond’s (it is right down on Church street) – and they have this french toast that is made from french bread and that is about 3 1/2 inches thick . . . 3 1/2 inches of delectable. One time while waiting in line to get to the bathroom – I had the fortune to look through the little porthole window into the kitchen – and the show that was on right then was “French Toast Extraviganza!!” They had these huge pieces of bread (soaked in goodness) that had been plomped into deep skillets that were full of – maybe butter – maybe angel tears (of joy) – whatever they were in – my knees got quavery – and I knew that I needed to make that french toast mine.

After a couple false starts – I think that I am getting really close to figuring out the magic.

Ingredients:

• Butter Milk
• Egg
• Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Butter
• Powdered Sugar
• Thick Bread (Italian, French, Challah or whatever floats your boat)

Directions:

• Mix the Butter milk, egg, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.
• Preheat oven to 425
• Cut bread into 3 inch slices
• Melt butter in a big pan
• Drop bread in mixture and let it soak a bit – flip it after a minute to make sure that it gets well soaked. Only soak as many pieces as will fit into your buttered pan.
• Pull the bread out – letting the excess drip back into the mixture – and then place it into your hot (but not insane hot) buttered pan.
• Flip the bread to make sure that it gets good and golden on both sides. About 1 1/2 minutes per side – this will be dependent on how hot your pan is.
• Once your bread is all cooked – put it onto a baking sheet and pop it into that oven (that you preheated) for about 6 minutes or so.

When the time in the oven is done . . . put some french toast onto your plate – add a little butter to it and then sprinkle it with a bit of powdered sugar and some more cinnamon . . . just to make sure. Hey – nobody said that this was health food . . . cough-cough . . . I mean seriously – right?! (jokes)

You might want something savory – like bacon or sausage . . . we did – but it didn’t make it to the plate . . . it was too-too tasty.

And now – I want french toast. Yum.