Earl Grey French Toast with Blackberry Jam

Earl Grey French Toast topped with home-made blackberry jam is the perfect, indulgent start to any breakfast or brunch. If you are an avid Earl Grey Tea fan then you’ll love the sweet buttery brioche bread that becomes infused with the bergamot scented tea leaves.

We drink Earl Grey Tea at breakfast … so why not add it to our breakfast bakes. Genus if you ask me! The beautifully scented leaves impart the most gentle, warming taste to the buttery bread, once fried in a knob of butter the French Toast is heaven on a plate.

Earl Grey and Blackberry are a great flavour pairing together. I’ve used it before in my Earl Grey Cupcakes with Blackberry Curd and Cream Cheese Frosting. Well worth checking out!

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Earl Grey French Toast – the ins and outs

The French Toast

Having a French mum I’ve grown up with French toast . In France it’s called Pain Perdu … which directly translated is ‘lost bread‘. It relates to bread when it has by passed its freshest point and starts to go stale. My mum would always make it with baguette that was pretty solid. But it turns out that this stale bread is the best receptacle to soak up the eggy milk. Being a day or so old means that the bread will hold its shape after its soaked up the milky egg mixture. If its too soft then it’ll fall apart when you try to lift it to your fry pan.

TIP: If your bread is fresh when you want to make this recipe- then pop each slice into the toaster and take it out when the surface is just starting to brown. This dries the bread sufficiently.

For this recipe however, we’re using brioche bread, which, again is a French bread but a highly enriched one with a high butter content.

The Earl Grey Tea

Team this with ground Earl Grey tea leaves that are added to the milk egg mix and the floral bergamot notes add another layer to the rich buttery goodness!

I make it simple and add the contents of the Earl Grey tea bags to the milky egg mix. However, if you don’t like the ground tea leaves to be in the dish you could heat up the milk and cream to a simmer, remove it from the heat and add the tea bags. Leave to steep for 15 minutes and then remove the tea bags. You’ll have the same bergamot notes in your mixture, just without the actual leaves them selves.

Hhhhmmm I wish I had some right now whilst sat tying away at my desk! (I shot this a little while back!)

Why use Brioche bread?

• You can get lovely thick slices from your brioche loaf.
• It’s an exceptionally rich bread that soaks up the egg mixture beautifully.
• It’s soft and light but won’t fall apart when pan fried (just make sure to use day old bread or lightly toast it before soaking.
• It looks fabulous when stacked up high! As shown below!

How to make this Indulgent French Toast

The ingredients needed are:

• Milk
• Double Cream
• Eggs
• Caster Sugar
• Vanilla Extract
• Earl Grey Tea bags

To make this is really easy. It only takes a couple of steps:

I don’t normally put cream in the everyday french toast that I grew up on, but as this is my idea of a breakfast treat, well the cream adds to the richness of the batter that coats and soaks into the bread.

Step 1: Add the milk, cream, eggs, caster sugar, vanilla extract and earl grey tea leaves into a medium bowl and whisk until fully combined.

Step 2: Heat a large fry pan on medium to high heat and add a large knob of butter

Step 3: Soak a couple of bread slices in the egg mixture for a couple of minutes. Ensure both sides are fully coated.

Step 4: Gently add the slices to the frypan and cook until the bottom is golden brown, approx 2 minutes, and then flip over and fry for a further 2 minutes until golden brown. Repeat this process with the remaining brioche slices until all are cooked.

More great recipes to try

As mentioned above, blackberries and earl grey work beautifully together, check out more inspiration here:

Earl Grey Cupcakes filled with Blackberry Curd. Recipe found here

I made my own Black berry Jam for this recipe. You don’t need large quantities of blackberries and it takes only 20 minutes. Make it the day before and you have a jar of divine home-made jam (hands down better than store bought) ready to go.

Easy Blackberry Jam. Recipe found here.

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