A baked french toast in the form of a loaf with a cream cheese filling! It tastes like a cheesecake baked into a french toast! The french toast is soft, custardy and buttery and not overly sweet because the richness and sweetness comes from the cream cheese filing. The top of the loaf has a crunchy, sweet crust which is reminiscent of the golden crust you get from traditional pan fried french toast. Serving with strawberries is optional. There is plenty of flavour already!
Preheat oven to 180C/350F. Generously butter a 10cm x 21cm / 4" x 8" loaf tin
Make Cream Cheese Filling - beat (or mix) the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until combined. Then add the egg and lemon juice, then beat/mix until smooth, light and fluffy.
Whisk the Egg Mixture ingredients together in a large bowl.
Dip 2 slices of bread into the Egg Mixture. Because you're using fresh bread, it should soak through with egg mixture pretty quickly.
Line the base of the loaf tin with the egg dipped bread. Cut bread if necessary to fill in gaps. Repeat twice more so you have 3 layers of egg dipped bread.
Spread all the Cream Cheese filling over the bread. Then top with two more layers of egg-dipped bread.
Dot surface with butter and scatter over the sugar.
Bake for 40 minutes until golden and puffed. Check at 30 minutes - if the top is already dark golden, then cover loosely with foil and return to the oven to finish baking (this is what I did).
Allow to rest for 15 minutes in the tin before turning out onto a cooling rack to rest for a further 5 minutes.
To serve, topped with Macerated Strawberries.
Macerated Strawberries
Combine strawberries and sugar in a bowl and set aside to "sweat" for at least 20 minutes.
Notes
1. The number of slices of bread you need will depend on the size of the bread. You need enough to create 5 layers in the loaf tin. Cut to fit.Typically, french toast recipes will call for stale bread. In this case, fresh is required because the bread is not kept aside for the egg mixture to soak into the bread. Fresh bread works better because it instantly soaks up the egg mixture.2. If you want to reduce calories, you don't have to do the butter and sugar topping. It creates an extra crunchy sweet crust and adds a buttery flavour to the french toast. It's an optional extra. :)3. Strawberries are optional. They are mainly for decoration. They add flavour but the french toast loaf is yummy enough without it too.4. Nutrition including Macerated Strawberries, for 8 servings.