Pumpkin French Toast made with Cinnamon Bread

When I was making cinnamon rolls last weekend I had a little extra dough. I rolled it up like the other cinnamon rolls, but didn’t cut it into rolls… I put it in a bread pan and let it rise for an extra 30 minutes, then baked it up (350 degrees, 15 mins).
Once it was done baking, I set it aside and after it was cooled wrapped it up in some foil. I set it aside for a couple days, waiting to make some pumpkin french toast with it. It was hard to resist eating the cinnamon bread while it was in our house, but if you’ve ever had french toast with cinnamon bread you know how good it is! The middle part of the cinnamon bread (where the butter and sugar and cinnamon are all gooey) gets carmalized on the outside during the cooking process and stays gooey on the inside of the french toast. Also the homemade bread is a lot more porous than store bought sliced bread so it soaks up the egg/pumpkin mixture much better.
If you don’t want to make cinnamon bread for your french toast try one of these purchased cinnamon breads—they make such a difference for french toast. A favorite of ours is the Great Harvest Cinnamon Chip bread. Also the Kneaders Cinnamon monkey bread or most grocery stores offer a “homemade” style cinnamon bread in their bakery area.
Ingredients:

• Cinnamon bread or monkey bread, sliced
• 3/4 c. pumpkin puree
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• butter for cooking

Heat a griddle or pan (I like to heat my griddle to the highest setting which is 400 F degrees). While it’s heating, whisk together pumpkin, milk, egg, vanilla, and cinnamon. Melt butter on griddle or pan. Dip sliced bread into pumpkin/egg mixture and let soak until covered on each side. Cook on each side until golden brown.
The gooey cinnamon center is so good. Jazz up your family’s french toast! And the pumpkin and cinnamon are the perfect rich ways to make this taste like fall. We used maple syrup this time but I have tried homemade cinnamon syrup and that is always delicious too! And yes, confession we did eat this for dinner. It’s always fun to mix up dinner with a recipe that’s easy for me a crowd pleaser for the fam.