Ice-cream French Toast

Before I had a chance to visit What8ver Cafe in Richmond, I saw pictures of their Ice-cream Toast all over Facebook. Every picture I saw made me want to lick my screen. Okay, it wasn't that extreme but I love bread and I love ice-cream; to combine the two together was like my ultimate dream come true. I don't know why that idea never occurred to me before. After trying the Ice-cream toast at What8ver, it seemed easy enough to re-create - but with a bit of a twist. While What8ver's version is crispy, inside and out, mines maintain the softness of the bread but still have that satisfying crunch you can get from the toasted bread-box. The toast itself is easy enough to make unless you want to go the extra mile and make your own bread. What I like most about this is that it is easy to change up the flavors to get whatever kind of toast you'd like.

Ice-cream French Toast
Yields ~ 2 Toast boxes.

1 loaf of unsliced bread (I prefer white)
3 eggs
1/2 cup of heavy cream or milk
1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Additional
2-3 strawberries
1/4 banana
2 chocolate wafer sticks
chocolate ice-cream
chocolate sauce
Nutella
whip cream

Toast Box:  Preheat your oven to 300-350 degrees. Take the loaf of bread and cut it in half. Half a loaf of bread was the right sized box for me, but it can be easily adjusted to whatever size you like. To form your box, use a serrated knife and cut out the center of the bread by running it along the edges. Carefully pull out the bread - separating it from the crust. The neater you do this part, the neater your toast sticks would be. Cut the bread into rectangular bread sticks.

Heat up an oiled frying pan while you combine the eggs, cream, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla in a small bowl. Dip the toast sticks in the egg mixture, one at a time, with just enough to coat the bread; it shouldn't be soggy. Do this quickly or the bread will soak up too much of the egg. Place the dipped bread into the frying pan, flipping them every now and then until all sides are golden brown. I did mine in batches because my pan was not big enough, so while my second batch was just about done, I coated the toast box with left-over egg mixture and then popped it into the oven to be toasted. You can do this step whenever - depending on how toasted you want your box to be. It's also probably best to do this step just before you are about to serve it. And in the last few minutes, I also run it under the broiler to brown up the top.

Assemble: When everything - toast box and french toast sticks - are finished, you can assemble! Arrange the french toast sticks inside the bread box to form a kind of grid pattern. Drizzle a bit of chocolate sauce and nutella onto the toast sticks. Slice up the bananas and strawberries.

Place a scoop of ice-cream on the corner (or wherever else you would like it), add some whip cream on the side and then arrange your fruits. Finish it all off by drizzling a bit more chocolate sauce or nutella on top.

Variation: Aside from this version, I think a Matcha Toast box would be really good. Prepare the toast box the same way, but instead of chocolate ice-cream and drizzling sauce on top of the toast sticks, use red beans and Matcha icecream.