Cinnamon Roll French Toast

Lately, my sleep schedule has been way off. I’ve been taking queues from my body and sleeping/napping when I’m tired and being active when I have the energy. Sometimes it doesn’t always correlate with the appropriate times the rest of the world is on. Take for example last night. I had the urge to bake cinnamon rolls around midnight. This morning, I got up around 10:30am and by the time most people were thinking about lunch, I opted to make breakfast. So to kick start my day (albeit late,) I made Cinnamon Roll French Toast with the leftovers from last night’s baking urge…

There are some great cinnamon roll recipes I’ve made in the past and last night, I made these (minus the nuts) since I haven’t baked up from Peter Reinhart’s book in awhile. If you’re in the mood for convenience though, you can certainly use tubes of store bought cinnamon roll dough or make any other cinnamon roll recipe you prefer. The key is to make them in advance and allow them to dry out a bit so the rolls can soak up the sweet, eggy goodness like french toast would.

The idea of taking a cinnamon roll and transforming it into french toast was inspired by an IHOP commercial I saw on tv. That lead me to go online to look at the IHOP menu and I recalled how they offered cinnamon roll french toast for a limited time. I knew at that point what I’d be doing with my leftover cinnamon rolls!

I served my cinnamon roll french toast topped with some excess cream cheese frosting and fresh fruit, along side of scrambled eggs and a maple sausage patty…. mmm!

prepared cinnamon rolls – homemade or store bought & baked, un-iced cooled and slightly dried out
2 large eggs
1/4 cup milk (whole or 2%)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
cooking spray

Garnish as desired:
cream cheese frosting, maple syrup, butter, fresh fruit, etc.

In a shallow dish, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon and nutmeg; set aside.

Take your prepared cinnamon rolls that have been cooled and slightly dried out and place in the egg mixture to soak up for 2-3 minutes. Flip over and allow other side to soak for another 2-3 minutes.

In a non-stick skillet over medium high heat, spray with cooking spray. Once skillet heats up, place egg soaked cinnamon roll into the pan and press down to flatten. Allow cinnamon roll to brown up and cook before flipping to other side. Flip and cook other side.

Remove from pan and garnish with your preferred french toast toppings!