Simple Breakfast: French Toast

If your kids refuse to eat eggs, then french toast may be one of the simple ways to get some eggs into them. It’s quite delicious, and they can be topped with most anything that you’d like. Similar to waffles or pancakes, these are a simple breakfast that give you the opportunity to be creative (or not) with how you top them off. It’s also pretty easy to make french toast a little healthier than waffles or pancakes.

If you’ve never made french toast before, you only need two ingredients, although you’ll generally use five or so. Bread and eggs (or egg whites) are the two requirements for making french toast. Usually you’ll also add milk, a little sugar, and some cinnamon as well to your mixture, but none of these items are required, and you can make french toast that is quite tasty without using them. Mix all of the items together, dip your bread in the mix, and cook them.

For your kids, making french toast with regular bread (whatever bread you buy at the store) and using regulars eggs and milk is usually totally fine. Unless your child is struggling with eating too much junk food, there’s usually no reason to go for the healthy alternatives. If you’re looking to watch your calories though, french toast can be easily modified to make a much lower calorie dense version that tastes just as delicious.

For starters, look carefully at the bread you’re choosing for making your french toast. Bread can vary wildly in calories. Most regular bread has anywhere from 70 to 120 calories in it - a 50 calorie difference between brands of bread is quite large. If you have two pieces of french toast using bread that has 120 calories vs ones that have 70 calories, you’re looking at 100 calorie difference. That’s quite large when you’re trying to cut calories. You can find bread with even less calories than that - down to 40 calories. That’s an enormous amount of calories to be cutting out just on bread.

The other easy way to cut out calories in your french toast is by replacing regular eggs with egg whites for the mixture. Eggs have a lot of extra calories in the egg yolks. Egg yolks are full of healthy fats, but if you’re trying to cut your calorie intake then just using egg whites is a great option to reduce calories. An egg has about 70 calories - an equivalent amount of egg whites has 25. You’d be saving about 45 calories per egg by going to egg whites - that’s a large difference when you’re looking at trying to diet.

Actually putting this recipe together is simple. Mix all of your ingredients together outside of the bread. Use a whisk to make sure that everything is well mixed together. Put a pan or griddle on medium high heat and spray with cooking spray before cooking. Put a slice of bread into the mixture, then flip it over and get the other side covered in the egg mixture. Place it on the pan to cook and then repeat for as many pieces of bread as you can cook. Cook on both sides until the eggs are all cooked.

The key to making absolutely delicious and fluffy french toast is to let your bread soak in the egg mixture. Don’t try to get the bread out of the mixture quickly - let it sit in there for a few seconds before putting it onto the pan. You really want that egg mixture soaked into your bread. This will add a little bit of additional cooking time, but it will also make your french toast taste even better.

Top your french toast with anything that you like - you can go with syrup if you want, but fruit is also a great option as well. Yogurt is also a healthy alternative. Most anything that you feel like can go on top of french toast - don't be afraid to experiment.

Making french toast doesn’t have to be hard, and you may find it’s one of your favorite breakfasts. You can make low calorie french toast easily if you’re looking to eat less but still enjoy your meals.