Food and Recipes Recipes Baked Almond French Toast with Maple-Blackberry Syrup Be the first to rate & review! You'll dream all night of this overnight French toast. By Pam Lolley Pam Lolley Pam Lolley developed and tested recipes for Southern Living Magazine in the Souths most trusted Test Kitchen for 19 years. She worked closely with the editors planning and packaging stories, collaborating with art and photo teams on food styling and recipe reproduction to ensure reader satisfaction, content quality control, and recipe authenticity history and cooking. Her area of expertise was baking and and pastry development and she acted as the point person for these areas in the Test Kitchen. With 30+ years of experience in the culinary field, Pam created and tested 1000s of recipes for Southern Living. Southern Living's editorial guidelines Published on August 25, 2022 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: Photographer: Jennifer Causey; Food Stylist: Emily Nabors Hall; Prop Stylist: Missie Neville Crawford Active Time: 25 mins Chill Time: 8 hrs Total Time: 9 hrs 20 mins Servings: 10 Overnight French toast is the gift you give yourself the next morning. Sure, you may not feel eager to pull out the ingredients for breakfast after you've cooked and cleaned up dinner, but your tomorrow self will thank you for the work. After an overnight chill, the brioche bread cubes soak up the almond-rich custard, turning dense and silky. This recipe calls for fresh blackberries and strawberries, to match the blackberry jam in the maple-blackberry syrup, but you can really get creative with this. Go with strawberry jam in the syrup, and load up with more juicy strawberries. Blueberries would be an excellent option, too. You can use any jam you like; just pair the berries or fruit you think works best with it. French toast isn't a great make-ahead and freeze option. The bread will just disintegrate when it's thawed. But if you need to shave some time off the hands-on work, cut the brioche up when you have a few moments, and pop the bread cubes into a zip-top plastic bag. If you plans to make the almond French toast in the next day or two, you can leave the brioche in the bag. Being a bit stale is actually a good thing for French toast breads. But if it'll be more than a short window of time before you make the breakfast casserole, just pop the chopped bread in the freezer. You won't even have to thaw it before mixing with the other ingredients. Ingredients 1 (8-oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened ½ cup packed light brown sugar 2 tsp. vanilla extract ¾ tsp. almond extract ¼ tsp. kosher salt 8 large eggs 2 cups whole milk 1 cup heavy whipping cream 14 cups (1-inch) brioche bread cubes (16 oz.) ¾ cup sliced almonds 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar 1 cup pure maple syrup ¼ cup seedless blackberry jam Fresh strawberries and blackberries, for serving Directions Beat together cream cheese and brown sugar with a heavy-duty stand mixer on medium speed using the paddle attachment, until smooth and creamy. Beat in vanilla extract, almond extract, and salt until well incorporated. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating until well blended. Gradually add milk and cream, beating at low speed until well incorporated. Place bread cubes in a lightly greased (with cooking spray) 13- x 9-inch baking dish. Slowly pour egg mixture evenly over bread cubes. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight. Preheat oven to 350°F. Remove plastic wrap, and sprinkle casserole evenly with almonds and granulated sugar. Bake in preheated oven until golden brown and set in the middle, 50 to 55 minutes, covering with aluminum foil the last 15 minutes. Stir together maple syrup and jam in a small saucepan, and cook over medium-low until heated through and jam has melted. Serve casserole warm with warm jam syrup. Top with fresh blackberries, if desired. Rate it Print