Overnight Blueberry Stuffed French Toast with Blueberry-Lemon Sauce & The OXO Giveaway!

Before I begin with the recipe, I am THRILLED to announce that today marks the very first giveaway in Chew Nibble Nosh’s (short, but pretty fun so far) history!  The wonderful people at OXO offered me the chance to try out one of their latest and greatest products, which I jumped on, of course!   They also included an extra one in the box for me to give away to one lucky reader!  I’ll feature the product, the retro-cool OXO Egg Beater, in today’s post.  Before the recipe at the bottom, you’ll find out how you can enter the drawing and win one for yourself!  Who doesn’t want an egg beater for Christmas, right? (Sorry!  This Giveaway has ended!)

Christmas is one of the few mornings of the year that I make a big deal about breakfast.  I’ll occasionally make pancakes for the kids on the weekends, but we’re an instant oatmeal/frozen waffle/box cereal family most of the time.  I do like to have a nice breakfast waiting for the family after we’ve rushed through our presents on Christmas morning, though, and this make-ahead french toast is the perfect thing.

I started by cubing up some bread.  You’ll need 12 cups of bread, all together.  I used sourdough baguettes and needed about 1 1/2 baguettes to do the job.

Half of the bread went into a greased 9×13 inch pan.  I topped it with a cup of fresh blueberries (you can use frozen, too) and an 8 oz. block of reduced fat cream cheese that I had cut into cubes.

Then, I covered the berries and cheese with the remaining bread cubes.

(Here’s where the egg beater comes in…)

I used the egg beater to whisk together nine eggs, some milk and maple syrup.  This egg beater really is fantastic.  In no time flat, and with virtually no work on my part, I had a perfectly whipped egg mixture to pour over the bread and berries in the pan.

Once I was done with the beater, I just pushed a button and the bottom half popped right off.  Into the dishwasher it went!

Then, I just covered the pan and placed it in the fridge, for a good night’s rest.

In the morning, the french toast needed to bake for close to an hour.  While it did, I whipped together a quick blueberry lemon sauce to top the french toast with.  You could use just regular syrup if you don’t want to mess with this, but everyone agreed that this sauce was great!  My only suggestion might be that if you’re serving breakfast for more than four people, you may want to double the sauce recipe.  My family of four finished breakfast and there were only about two tablespoons of the sauce left.

In a small saucepan, I combined some sugar and water.  It came to a boil and I let it simmer for about ten minutes.

Then, I added about a cup of fresh blueberries to the sugar-water.  This cooked down for about 15 minutes more.

At this point, I stirred about a half a teaspoon of lemon zest into the blueberry mixture.  Once it was fragrant, I added a little cornstarch-water mixture to thicken up the sauce just a tad.

The french toast came out of the oven just in time.  I had two little girls drooling next to the oven!  We sliced it up and topped it with that wonderful sauce and sat down to a breakfast fit for Christmas morning!

The following giveaway has ended.  Thank you for entering!

Would you like one of these fantastic OXO Egg Beaters for yourself?

If so, simply leave a comment after this post on Chew Nibble Nosh.  Tell me about your favorite “special” breakfast treat! 

Want another entry?  If you follow me on Facebook, leave another comment and let me know!  If you follow my Twitter feed, leave yet another!  The winner will be chosen via a random number generator software program, so each comment will serve as a separate entry.  Each individual may have no more than three entries (assuming main comment, Twitter and Facebook comments/entries are all utilized). Make sure you leave separate comments if you’re a Facebook and/or Twitter follower!

The Nitty Gritty Important Stuff:

–  The giveaway is only open to US residents who are 18 years of age or older.

–  Entries must be received by 10:00 AM EST on December 25th.

–   The winner will be chosen at random and contacted via the contact email left with the winning comment.  The winner will be asked for their name, age and mailing address.  If the winner does not respond by  12:00 PM, January 2, 2012, with the requested information, a new winner will be chosen.

–  The winner will be announced on Facebook and Twitter during the afternoon of December 25th.

– The giveaway prize has been provided at no cost to Chew Nibble Nosh by OXO.

GOOD LUCK!

OVERNIGHT BLUEBERRY STUFFED FRENCH TOAST WITH BLUEBERRY SAUCE

Adapted from the Virginia Bed & Breakfasts Cookbook