PB&J French Toast Sticks

You might be seeing a pattern of easy foods this week. Sunday night we had the sloppy joes I previously blogged about, Monday night was grilled cheese with tomato soup, Wednesday night was homemade pizza and last night was this recipe: pb&j french toast sticks. The reason for the not-so-frilly fare is because of the Christmas holiday fast approaching. I have some new things I'm trying up my sleeve, so I wanted to save my culinary energy for the food I'll be preparing for my family Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Stay tuned for those recipes.

But the recipe for pb&j french toast sticks (pb&j=peanut butter and jelly), which came from the December issue of Woman's Day magazine, struck me as easy and fun. We're not yet giving our son peanut butter, so we substituted it for cashew butter. If you don't do peanuts in your house, you can use cashew or almond butter as a substitute. Likewise, I used good old grape jelly but you can use any jelly or jam that you fancy.

PB&J French Toast Sticks

8 slices of soft white or whole-wheat bread

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

3 tbsp grape or strawberry jelly

4 large eggs

1/4 cup milk

2 tbsp butter

Confectioners' sugar

1. Spread 1 tbsp peanut butter on each slice of bread. Spread a rounded tsp of jelly down the center of each piece. Fold bread in half, pressing edges to seal.

2. In a 13 x 9-in. baking dish, whisk eggs and milk. Place the sandwiches in the dish and let soak, 1 minute per side.

3. Melt 1 tbsp butter in a skillet over medium heat. In two batches, cook the sandwiches until golden brown, 2 minutes per side, adding more butter to skillet as needed. Sprinkle with confectioners' sugar before serving.

The Verdict: Maybe not our healthiest meal ever, but was it ever fun!

Making these "sticks" is a snap. Really, as you've probably guessed, you don't need the ingredient amounts. Spread the nut butter and jelly on the bread, fold, whip up some eggs, cook in a hot pan with butter. I've just never thought to add peanut butter and jelly to french toast. But why not?

The original recipe asks for the crusts on the bread to be removed. I didn't bother. Your call. My son, who tends to be fussy about bread crust, didn't even notice. They're an odd size and very sandwich looking, so I served ours without forks and knives. To a toddler/preschooler this will probably be messy, but again, it was fun to eat egg-y toast oozing with jelly. My son actually exclaimed, "I like this!" which was interesting as his positive meal comments are minimal. (We hear, quite vocally, about what he doesn't like.)

This was fun. It's obviously a great breakfast, but makes a different and easy "brinner" (breakfast for dinner) as well!