French Toast Muffins - Recipe

Tastes like french toast, yet contains no stale bread! Amazing!

Now, didn't I just say that I didn't want to focus on recipes/home cooked food in my intro? And here I am in my second review going over a recipe.


French. Toast. Muffins. Doesn't the name alone sound positively decadent? It's taking one of the best loved breakfast foods out there, the best use of stale bread ever, and it's transformed into an ever so convenient muffin form. What's not to love?


The particular recipe used here hails from the cookbook The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes by Kris Holechek. Now, I initially acquired this cookbook as the kindle version though my library's digital borrowing program. While I absolutely love digital books, I'm not terribly fond of digital cookbooks, for many reasons that I won't go into here; let's just say I don't like them for the time being and leave it at that. That aside, this little recipe alone has convinced me to actually buy the book so that I have plenty of time to go through many of the other recipes and try them at my leisure. 


Now, you may be wondering, "Where can I get this recipe? I must try it!" Well, guess what? It's you're lucky day! Kris herself as the recipe posted on her blog! Huzzah! Go. Read. Salivate! Mmmmmmm.


Continued after the break....





Methodology. I know, I know! Unless you're really experienced, you really shouldn't modify a recipe the first time you make it. Especially not with baked goods. Nor am I comfortable with making changes to a recipe that I intend to review for others. Alas, a few changes were made with this one. 


First, I cut the recipe in half. A crazy thing to do, right? Well, since it's just my husband and me here, and I'm not sure how well these would store (or ship, for that matter), I only wanted to make half. Also, I wanted to use my beloved convection toaster oven. A full 12 muffin pan won't fit in there, but a sixer will. I suppose that was my baking time. I'm pretty sure this is the likely reason why my muffins didn't quite rise up so much, especially compared to the picture on Kris's blog. Or it could be an error I made with the ingredients while halving them. Or maybe because of my third modification, which was purely an accident; I forgot to put the oil in. Ooops. Who knows, I'm no expert baker! 


The recipe itself came together very quickly & easily. I used an electric hand mixer to speed things along. I don't think I would've gotten the soy yogurt evenly mixed in without it. At the very least use a good wire wisk to do the job if you don't have an electric mixer. But make sure you don't over-mix either!


I decided to go with the optional glaze with these muffins as well, why the heck not? I had to change that slightly as well. As is in the recipe, I ended up with a frosting-like paste rather than anything resembling a glaze. Not sure if I did anything wrong with this one, but I found that adding just a super tiny drizzle of soymilk thinned it out perfectly to use as a glaze. 


To store them, I enclosed them in a plastic food container, at room temperature. I noticed the next day that the glaze had melted/liquefied, but they still taste fine! I am wondering if they'll freeze ok, maybe I'll experiment with one and update with my findings here later!

A view of the inside, since I know some people like that.
Note the melty glaze. 

Cost. Sigh. I don't really feel like doing a cost analysis of a recipe. Have I not mentioned that I'm lazy? Analyzing the individual costs of ingredients that are easily acquired in bulk quantities for cheap and are already staples in my pantry so I honestly don't remember what I paid for them.... well, it would just be an exercise in frustration. Unless there's a recipe cost analyzer out there that I don't know about. That would be cool. 


Anyway, let's just say these are pretty cheap, as typically with anything homemade that doesn't call for exotic/pricey ingredients. Most, if not all the ingredients, any typical vegan should already have on hand. For me personally, the only things I had to go out and buy were the soy yogurt, maple extract and powdered sugar. Sure, I could've made my own powdered sugar with the regular stuff I have & cornstarch. But I'm lazy like that. So I bought some. Oddly enough, I had a surprisingly difficult time finding the soy yogurt. Well, not just any soy yogurt; most of the stores around here carry some soy yogurt. But specifically plain or vanilla soy yogurt. Most places around here only seem to want to carry the fruity ones. And even when I did finally find plain & vanilla (at my local Whole Foods), I got stuck buying it in a large container instead of the typical single serving ones. Sigh. 


Health/Nutrition. Ummmm... yeah. French toast muffins? The name alone should tell you this is not a health food. Not by any means. This is definitely a special treat item. 


A precise nutritional breakdown is pretty much impossible for any homemade recipe, as it will depend on actual ingredients used, such as different brands, varieties, or if you decide to omit or add your own ingredients. Cooking methods can have an impact as well. 


Without a nutritional breakdown of any kind, it should go without saying that this is loaded with sugar, especially if you do the glaze & the powdered sugar topping (not that omitting those will save you all that much in the big picture). My recipe analysis puts these at 7 grams of fat (if you don't accidentally omit the oil as I did) and 4 grams of protein per muffin. Overall they have close to 225 calories per muffin. Your individual results may vary. 


As far as sensitivities go, Kris gives some tips on doing gluten-free baking in her book, but I can't comment on that as I have ZERO experience with gluten free baking. With the appropriate choices in ingredients though, this should be easy to make free of any other common allergens such as soy or nuts. 


Yum Factor. I've alluded to it already. These are absolutely delicious! Even with me slighly botching the recipe, they do manage to capture the flavor and texture of french toast in a way that is absolutely uncanny! Love it so much! The only way they could be more perfect is if some how they manage to get a nice crispy/crunchy outside, just like the real deal. Still, these are quite amazing. Moist and delicious, sweet and mapley. Now my most favorite muffin in the world! Make them, you won't regret it!


Other Tid Bits. I do want to experiment with freezing these, see how well they hold up to that. If they don't fare well with freezing, I'll only ever have to make a half batch if I'm only eating them at home. These are definitely a good option to bring to a pot luck or bake sale, in which case I would definitely make a full batch, if not two!

I'd suggest making them day-of if you're
bringing them to an event. or adding the
powdered sugar shortly before serving, if
you want it to stay powdered, that is.