Oven-baked "French Toast"

Sometime in the past decade or so, a new family holiday tradition snuck up on us - oven-baked pancakes on Christmas morning. My Dad found the recipe somewhere (probably in the hunt for the elusive Finnish Pancake Recipe) and it was good enough to "stick". The original oven-baked pancakes are a fluffy, eggy dish with no sugar in the actual recipe - just in the sauce. They puff up in the oven and are really a sight to see! And all the fluff is caused by the eggs - no yeast, and not even any corn-tainted baking powder.

Here's my first attempt at a revision that might make this even friendlier.

Oven-Baked French Toast
3 lg eggs
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 t salt
1 t ground cinnamon
dash of ground clove
1/2 t ground nutmeg
1 t Torani Sugar-free vanilla syrup
1/2 c milk
2 T melted butter

Pre-heat oven to 350F and grease a medium cast iron skillet or a 2-3 qt casserole. Beat the eggs. Add the flour to the eggs slowly. Add the remaining ingredients. Pour into the greased skillet/casserole and bake for ~ 20 mins, or until the sides are high and brown and the center is puffy and cracked.

Sauce
2 T melted butter
2 T warm orange juice

Combine melted butter and orange juice.

To serve - cut at least in halves, place on plates or in bowls, top with sauce.

Assuming two servings (I ate the whole thing myself this morning- yum!), this contains about 450 Kcal, 15g protein, 28g carbs and only 5g of sugar - including the sauce! I might try this with less flour or another egg next time - most of the carbs are from the flour, and the texture might be better with less flour, anyhow.

Almost entirely unlike cookies

It's the holidays.

Holidays are *hard* with allergies. Anything social that involves eating is hard. And almost everything social involves eating or drinking!

I attempted several "dessert" recipes around Thanksgiving. You never heard about them because they didn't work. And I am STILL trying to get merainge off of the cookie sheet. The pumpkin custard never got off the drawing board, but the pumpkin + flour added to the merianges that never fluffed up made very good french toast! (Not very good pumpkin bread though - it didn't have nearly enough sweetener in it)

So this was another attempt at sugar-free cookies. Sugar-free Sugar Cookies, actually. I pulled the original recipe out of Diabetic Living, but what I'm posting here has been edited heavily - first to make it "cheat" less, then because the actual recipe doesn't seem to have had NEARLY enough liquid to actually make it work.

Sugar-Free Sugar Almost Cookies

1/2 c. butter (1 stick, softened)
1/2 c. sugar substitute - or, in my case, 1 t. stevia blend, 4 t. maple syrup. I should try at least 2t of the stevia-lactose blend next time.
1t baking powder
1/4 t salt
1/3 c. canola oil
2 eggs
1 t. Torani sugar-free vanilla
a few drops of orange flavoring
13/4c white flour
3/4c whole wheat flour (the magazine suggests "white wheat" flour)

Beat butter for about 30 seconds on high. Add sugar substitute, baking powder and sale, beat until fluffy. add eggs oil, vanilla + orange flavor. Beat in flours. Divide in half, cover, chill for 1 to 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375F. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutters, arrange on cookie sheets.

Bake for 6-8 minutes or until firm, cook on wire racks.


I had more luck if I left the dough a bit thicker - probably because it was still too dry (I've uped the butter and eggs in this copy). They *look* like cookies, but mostly taste like a maple whole wheat biscuit. My housemate insists they taste like nothing at all.

We both agree that they might work as "sugar cookies" if they had sugar or frosting on top of them. They also might make a good "graham cracker" crust for, say, a pumpkin custard pie....