Baked French Toast: A meal with six-ish ingredients

Now I know that most easy meals are made with five ingredients so you have that nice round number.  Well Booger and I go against the grain.  She sleeps wherever she wants to, and I cook with six ingredients.  This is one of those meals that looks like a lot of work went in to it, when really you just threw together six-ish ingredients and popped it in the oven.  It's not straight up dorm room cooking, because you do need an oven.  So for college students, use your dorm kitchen.  For the rest of us, if you don't have an oven where you live you might want to reassess your living situation.

Let's begin.  Here are your six ingredients:

1. A loaf of bread.  French or challah work best, and it's okay if it's a bit stale.
2. A brick of cream cheese
3. An apple (I used granny smith, but any firm apple will do)
4. 1 cup of milk
5. 6 eggs
6. 1 1/2 tsp of cinnamon
(ish) I added some nutmeg and a splash of vanilla, but those are purely optional.

If I had been thinking, I would have photographed the process, but the inspiration came too late.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

First you want to slice your bread into 1 inch slices.  That's pretty thick, so you'll only need four slices.  Take those slices and cut them into cubes.  Put half of the bread cubes in the bottom of a 11x7 pan.  (I didn't have one so I used a 13 1/2 x 9 and just added some more bread.)  Peel and core the apple, then spread slices on top of the bread layer.  Next, cut your cream cheese into cubes (this is where it's good to get a brick and not a tub) and sprinkle the cubes across the bread and apples.  Cover it all up with the second half of the bread.  Now comes the most cooking intensive part of this recipe.  Mix together the eggs, milk, and cinnamon (optional nutmeg and vanilla) in a bowl.  When they're completely combined, pour the mixture over the bread/apple/cream cheese layers.

Pop it in the oven for 35 minutes, and Bob's your uncle.  If you want to make it pretty, you can dust the top with powdered sugar.

Voila!

That's tonight's edition of cooking with cat.  For the original recipe go here.