Horton’s Cereal-Crusted French Toast

Horton’s Cereal-Crusted French Toast

This recipe is a little like running a marathon… except how many marathons end with a plate of french toast? If you’re not up for a baking marathon — this one is actually pretty intense! — take this as an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how we make the amazing french toast you can enjoy at sea at the Green Eggs and Ham Breakfast with The Cat in the Hat and Friends! (Or just substitute some of the components with premade ones. Nobody’s judging!)

a fork, plate and spoon SERVES 10 servings
clock TOTAL TIME 30 Min
hand holding a serving platter DIFFICULTY 3/5
Ingredients:
To make the brioche dough:
  • 3 lb, 3 oz flour
  • 18 whole eggs
  • 1 oz salt
  • 6 oz sugar
  • 2 oz dry yeast
  • 1.5 lb butter solids

For the french toast batter:
  • 8 oz flour
  • 3 lb egg
  • 1 lb sugar
  • 2 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 2 liters milk

Thick version of the batter (use this for brushing):
  • 1½ lb flour
  • 2 lb egg
  • 1 lb sugar
  • 2 tsp cinnamon powder
  • 2 cups milk
  • 12 oz Fruit Loops

Marshmallow (1 tray):
  • 1½ lb sugar
  • 6 oz liquid glucose
  • 350 mL water
  • 1 lb egg white
  • 3.5 oz gelatin
  • 300 mL water

The garnish:
  • Some strawberry
  • The marshmallows!

Procedure:
Let’s make some brioche:
  1. Mix the dry ingredients first — the flour, salt, sugar and dry yeast.
  2. Add those fresh eggs.
  3. Mix all of this together. You’ll get dough! Keep on mixing until it stops sticking to the walls of mixing bowl.
  4. Add soft butter and keep on mixing the dough until it turns smooth.
  5. Make individual bread loaves in a baking pans using 10 ounces of brioche dough at a time.

Now we’re making a french toast batter:
  1. Now you have freshly-baked brioche… in your home! Take a moment to savor that amazing scent.
  2. Cut your brioche into one-inch-wide slices.
  3. Prepare a french toast batter by simply combining the flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon powder and milk.
  4. Batter up! Dip both sides of your bread in the batter.
  5. Drizzle soft butter and oil prep on the bread and cook over medium heat until it’s golden-brown on both sides.

Let’s make more french toast batter. Except this time…
  1. Yep, we’re actually going to make more batter, but it’s a thicker version. Yum!
  2. Combine all of the ingredients — flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon powder and milk. Just leave the Fruit Loops aside for now.
  3. Now grab the cereal! Hand-crush half of it, leaving the other half whole, and mix all of it together.
  4. Brush your french toast with the thick batter. It should end up sticky. Use the stickiness to coat the french toast with the cereal.
  5. Grab a sheet tray and line up the pieces of french toast.
  6. Pass it through a CTX — that’s a commercial conveyor-belt oven, like what you’d use for pizza — set at 500° F (top and bottom). The trip through should take 7 minutes.

Ever made a marshmallow? Here’s how:
  1. Dissolve the gelatin with 600 mL of water and melt it over double boiler. You have a double boiler, right? (If not, search the Internet for how to improvise an alternative. It’s not hard!)
  2. Combine the sugar, water and glucose. Boil it until it reaches the consistency of a soft ball. Once the mixture is warm, add the gelatin.
  3. Beat the egg white, then pour syrup and make meringue. (We won’t go into the procedure here — the Internet can help… or really, just use pre-made marshmallows. There’s no shame in it!)
  4. Keep running the machine until the mixture cools down.
  5. Dust a tray lightly with powdered sugar.
  6. Pour a thin layer of the mixture into the tray.

Let’s make these ingredients garnish-worthy:
  1. Cut your strawberries into round slices using cookie cutter #2.
  2. Cut the marshmallows into round slices using the same cookie cutter.
  3. Arrange on a food-grade skewer. Each skewer should have four slices of strawberry and three slices of marshmallow. See the picture… hey, we’ve seen that hat somewhere before!
  4. Plate the french toast… and serve it with syrup, of course.
Hungry for more? See what you've missed!