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Start Your Day With Vegan-Friendly French Toast
I have a lot of vegan friends and they often ask me to try and recreate some of their favourite non-vegan meals. One of the meals I hear them talk about often is French toast. They can’t really enjoy French toast anymore because the traditional recipe calls for eggs. Well, that’s tough luck for vegans.
After hearing “Please, please, please Cynthia, make vegan French toast” for so many times, I decided to give it a try, so let me tell you my story of experimenting with French toast and trying to make it vegan-friendly.
Challenge Unlocked: Enjoy Your Glorious Vegan French Toast
I didn’t really know how to start with this recipe. One thing I knew though – I wanted the crust to be very crispy and the middle moist and finger-licking. When it comes to bread, I went with sourdough bread; it has a good texture for this recipe and won’t go all mushy when you soak it in egg and milk mixture. Challenge one solved!
The next thing to figure out is egg and milk mixture for soaking the bread. I used coconut milk; I find it to be creamy and rich in flavour unlike soy or almond milk, which are a bit watery. Vegan “egg” wouldn’t really work for this toast, so I had to think outside of the box. You know what I came up with? Almond meal! At first glance, it looked like everything would fall apart but it didn’t! And there I got another challenge solved.
I want my French toast to have the fragrance of chai so I had a mixture of chai spices and I infused milk with that and a bit of cinnamon. Bet allspice will work well, too!
And lastly, the most fun part about French toast is to choose the toppings and build the flavours. This is the stage where you can really go crazy! I went with a strawberry-banana combo and enhanced the flavours with some cacao nibs, maple syrup and omg-so-good coconut yogurt. This coconut yogurt is so delightful and velvety that you need to try it. It’s one of my favourite recipes I teach in online cooking classes.
I didn’t really believe this experiment would be successful but the end result was my exceptionally good Vegan French Toast. Jump to the recipe for the full list of ingredients and instructions.
Vegan French Toast Recipe!
Ingredients
For the Toast:
- 1 cup Coconut Milk or any other plant-based milk
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla
- 1/4 tsp Cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp Allspice
- 2 Tbsp Almond Meal
- Coconut Oil, for frying
- 4 slices Sourdough or Gluten-Free Bread
- A pinch of Salt
For the Toppings:
- 1/4 cup Pecans
- 2 Bananas, sliced
- 1 punnet Strawberries, sliced
- 2 Tbsp Cacao Nibs
- 4 Tbsp Cacao Yogurt
- Maple Syrup, as much as you like
- A pinch of #LOVE
Method
- Heat a pan on medium-low.
- Whisk together the milk, vanilla and spices and let it steep for 5 minutes.
- Strain, discard spice bits and stir in the almond meal.
- Add the bread slices (one at a time) to the infused milk and allow them to soak the liquid.
- Add a splash of coconut oil to the hot pan and fry the bread slices until golden brown and crispy around the edges on both sides.
- Top with the pecans, banana slices, and strawberries.
- Sprinkle with cacao nibs, drizzle with coconut yogurt and maple syrup and enjoy!
Serves: 4
Prep time: 5 mins
Cooking time: 10-15 mins
Freezer-friendly: No
C, GF, RSF, DF, VEG, V
How did this Vegan French Toast turn out for you? Did you make it with coconut or some other plant milk? What are your favourite toppings? Check out the video recipe on my YouTube channel and leave your comments below.
With love from my kitchen to yours,
Chef Cynthia Louise xx
