breakfast for a crowd Archives - Spice Up Your Life

Overnight French toast casserole is a much easier way to feature French toast for breakfast. Add in a little fresh fruit, and you have quite the wow factor for your morning meal or even a dessert table.

When I began writing this column over 10 years ago, I had grand illusions of people sending me their favorite recipes and me trying them.

What I found was that people are normally pretty guarded with their best dishes, and even more so, everyone wanted me to tell them something new to try instead of the other way around.

Since then, I have amassed quite the Pinterest page of recipes, a notebook of magazine cutouts and a large collection of saved tutorial videos that I source each week for my inspiration.

But for this week’s recipe, I didn’t have to go out looking. It found me.

Every summer, I get the opportunity to direct a short kids camp at Camp Mennoscah, and for the past I-don’t-know-how-many years, a wonderful group of ladies has volunteered to man the kitchen during our little camp.

This summer, on the last morning, they served us a fabulous blueberry French toast casserole for breakfast, and as I came through the chow line, they teased me a bit.

“Are we going to see this one in the paper?”

“If you send it to me, you will,” I told them.

So Marla emailed it to me right after camp, letting me know that her way of spicing up the recipe was to add the blueberries.

Well, over a month later, I finally had time to give this a try, only I used fresh cherries, since that’s what I had on hand. It was still delicious.

This original recipe comes from the blog “Fresh April Flours,” was tweaked by Marla Gillmore and the rest of the amazing kitchen crew, and received some more cinnamon in my version below.

Overnight Baked French Toast Casserole

Overnight French toast casserole is a much easier way to feature French toast for breakfast. Add in a little fresh fruit, and you have quite the wow factor for your morning meal or even a dessert table.

Course Breakfast, Dessert

Keyword breakfast casserole, breakfast for a crowd, brown sugar, canned cinnamon rolls, easy breakfast, French toast, fresh fruit, vanilla

Ingredients

8 to 9 cups stale bread cut into one-inch cubes
2 cups fresh fruit cut in bite-sized pieces (I used cherries)
1/4 cup butter melted
2/3 cup brown sugar
8 eggs
2 cups milk I used 2 percent
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
3 rounded teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Prepare a nine-by-13-inch casserole dish by spraying it with cooking spray.
Spread all the bread cubes and fresh fruit evenly into the dish and set it aside.
In a mixing bowl, combine the butter, brown sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and salt and whisk well until everything is well incorporated. (My brown sugar got a bit lumpy. If that happens even after lots of mixing, don’t sweat it. Just evenly distribute the lumps on the next step, and it’ll be fine.)
Evenly pour the egg mixture over the bread cubes in the dish and cover it with aluminum foil, plastic wrap or a lid. Refrigerate overnight or for at least three hours.
To bake the casserole, preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake, uncovered, for one hour or until the top is nicely browned and the custard is set.
Serve warm by itself, with some syrup, or even with a little powdered sugar sprinkled on top.

I ended up making a half batch of this in an eight-inch casserole dish, and it turned out great. It was more sugar than I’d want to have all the time for breakfast, but the warm, fresh cherries combined with the cinnamon and custard-y bread was excellent.

I don’t think mine turned out quite as well as the one I had at camp, but I think it’s because I made mine on my own. I suspect when you add the love of half a dozen wonderful volunteers, everything is bound to taste better.

This piece first appeared in print on July 27, 2023.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.

Crockpot Breakfast Casserole

Making breakfast for a crowd is easy with this crockpot breakfast casserole. It’s a great way to start the day.

Course Breakfast

Keyword breakfast for a crowd, crockpot, diced green chiles, eggs, frozen hashbrowns, garlic, garlic powder, half and half, sharp cheddar cheese, yellow onion

Ingredients

1 pound bacon diced (or sub in ground sausage)
1 small yellow onion diced
4 to 6 cloves garlic minced
8 ounces canned diced green chiles drained
26 ounces frozen hashbrowns
4 cups sharp cheddar cheese shredded
12 eggs
1 cup half and half
2 teaspoons garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and saute the diced bacon until it’s crispy. Line a plate with paper towels and place the cooked bacon on it.
Remove all but about one tablespoon of the bacon fat from the pan and add the diced onion. Saute until it’s cooked through, and then add the garlic. Saute for a couple more minutes and then remove the pan from the heat.
Coat the inside of your crockpot with cooking spray and layer in half of the hashbrowns. Add half of the shredded cheese, half of the onions, half the chiles and half the bacon. Repeat. (I saved a bit of the cheese and did a final layer on the top of mine.)
In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, half and half, garlic powder, salt and pepper until it is well combined.
Pour the mixture evenly into the crockpot.
Cook the casserole on low for eight hours or high for four hours. When the eggs are cooked through, serve immediately or turn the crockpot to warm until you’re ready to eat.
(Side note: If you don’t have time for the crockpot, follow the same steps with a deep nine-by-13-inch casserole dish. Bake in a 350-degree oven for about one hour or until it’s cooked through.)