French Toast

This morning, I felt like having pancakes for breakfast, but it is hard to make an edible pancake that is low carb, so I decided to go with French Toast.

Eiffel Tower

Basically, French Toast is nutritionally like scrambled eggs and toast, plus cinnamon and sugar. Most people use some kind of fake maple or fruit syrup that is high in sugar. While genuine maple syrup is more natural, it is, like honey, in Atkins low-carb terms essentially the same as the sugary syrups. Sugar free syrup isn't as tasty as real maple syrup, but it tastes about the same as the ones made with sugar to me.

For Q-CC French Toast, start by cracking open a couple of eggs and putting them in a Teflon-coated frying pan as if you are making scrambled eggs.  Add a splash of milk and, without adding heat, scramble it all together. 

Take three pieces of Sara Lee Delightful Bread and put them into the scrambled eggs. After they've soaked for a few seconds, flip them over with the spatula and try to soak up the rest of the eggs.  Depending on the exact size of the eggs (or type of bread) you used, this should be about the right ratio of eggs to bread.  If not, make a note for next time about how to change the recipe for your ingredients.  In any case, if one piece of bread doesn't get quite saturated on both sides, don't worry about it.  It's still edible.

Sprinkle a lot of cinnamon and a gentle dusting of Splenda on one side, then flip the French toast over to repeat the process.  Wash the spatula to get the raw eggs off.

French Chateau

At this point, turn the range top on medium.  Note that because we have been preparing the French toast in the frying pan, we aren't cooking it in butter, which means it will be lower in fat and calories but also will lack that buttery flavor, so I suppose you could coat the French Toast with butter spray, but to me it tastes fine without it.  Then again, there is also sugar-free syrup with butter flavor as a less messy alternative solution for butter-lovers.

Because the pan isn't pre-heated, it will take a bit longer to cook the first side, so allow about two minutes, then flip it over.  You want any egg coating to be thoroughly cooked.  If it looks pretty done, then cook the other side for about a minute.  If not, when you've cooked the other side, flip it back over for a few seconds.  While you want the egg to be done, you don't want the French toast to be burnt.  I don't use a timer, but I can tell when it is ready.  So can you.  This doesn't require a degree in culinary arts or chemistry.

Plate the French toast.  I usually take one bite to test it, and if it seems done.  If it isn't quite done (actually, I've never had this occurence), then you can put the french toast back in the frying pan for a few seconds to finish cooking.  When it's done, add syrup or

Mom at age 77

When I was a little boy, my favorite pancake topping was Mom's homemade hot syrup.  I don't know how she made it, but I think it was basically sugar and maybe something like vanilla, or perhaps it involved Karo Light Syrup, which I know we always had in our pantry for cooking sweets like pecan pie. In any case, it is too high in sugar to attempt duplicating, but it deserves an honorable mention as something I always enjoyed.  I suppose you could probably heat any syrup, if you don't mind cleaning an extra sauce pan.
Perhaps you have this dilemma: you only have two pieces of bread or only want two pieces of French toast.  Well, make it the same way, but only use two pieces of bread.  The extra eggs will cook sort of like an omelette, and you can either eat them or throw them out.  One egg?  Deal with it by using only one or two pieces of bread.

Clean-up, of course, involves only washing the frying pan, which is extremely easy if you didn't use butter. along with the spatula, plate and fork.  The whole process from preparation to eating to cleaning up takes less time that ordering at most fast food restaurants during the morning rush, and you know exactly how healthy you've made it.