Greek Tsoureki French toast with honey and cinnamon & Tsoureki French toast filled with Nutella and banana
Αβγοφέτες τσουρεκιού με μέλι και κανέλα - Αβγοφέτες τσουρεκιού γεμιστές με Nutella και μπανάνα
Published originally on my blog on 23 April 2014
Hello everyone and Christos Anesti to my fellow Greeks!
I hope you all had a good Easter with lots of good food and company.
My Easter was filled with lamb, roast potatoes, eggs and salads of all kinds, with wine and tsoureki and koulourakia and the expected food coma that comes afterwards, when all you can do is lie on the couch, motionless.
The next day though, hunger strikes again, as it always does, and the leftover tsoureki (Greek Easter sweet bread) gets a second life. The act of making French toast ensues and that’s exactly what happened on Easter Monday.
My tsoureki was not that sweet, I added less sugar this year, so the addition of ripe bananas and nutella was the perfect thing to do. Besides, who can possibly resist the image of Nutella oozing out of two pieces of fried bread? You could certainly try a homemade nutella version if you prefer.
Needless to say, the combination of hazelnut, chocolate and banana is out of this world, but the mahlepi and mastiha in the tsoureki elevated this filled French toast to a whole new level of deliciousness. To make things even better (or worse, depending on who you’re talking to), I also added some Frangelico, a hazelnut liqueur, in the eggs and milk mixture and it really brought out the nuttiness in the nutella, giving the French toast a lovely flavor.
Nevertheless, my all-time favorite way to eat French toast, or avgofetes (αβγοφέτες) as we call them in Greece, is simply by drizzling them with Greek honey, preferably thyme honey and dusting them generously with ground cinnamon. That, to me, is the quintessence of simplicity.
So take your pick and enjoy your left-over tsoureki bread or any other type of bread you have around the house.
See also this Tsoureki bread and butter pudding with strawberries, vanilla and currants.
Avgofetes Tsourekiou me meli kai kanela - Tsoureki (Greek Easter Bread) French toast with Greek thyme honey and cinnamon
My Politiko tsoureki is ideal for French toast because it retains its structure when it gets stale and has a well-browned crust and robust crumb.
You can substitute of course with other types of sweet bread like brioche or challah, or any other type of non-sweet bread. The staler the bread, the better it is as it will soak up more of the egg-milk mixture.
