Stuffed French Toast Casserole

Hey there!

So I'm sure you all have noticed by now that a good majority of my recipes are stovetop recipes. For some reason, I don't really use my oven too much besides finishing off the meal or baking. My very first blog post was for an Amaretto French Toast. Jon asked for french toast the other day and I was just not feeling standing over the stove flipping 12 pieces of toast, y'know? So I decided I would make it a casserole, which I've done before and we loved. It comes out kind of like a breakfast bread pudding. We love stuffed french toast, so I stuffed the bread with a cream cheese icing. The recipe is similar to my regular french toast, minus the amaretto. I'm sticking with what I know tastes good on this one. Hope you guys enjoy this!

12-14 pieces sweet bread
2 cups milk
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 lb powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
Glaze:
1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease casserole dish with butter. In large mixing bowl, combine milk, eggs, flour, brown sugar, vanilla extract, almond extract, ground cinnamon, and ground nutmeg. Whisk together until smooth.

In a separate medium bowl, beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla and almond extract until smooth.

Spread cream cheese icing on bread and sandwich together. Cut "sandwiches" into 6-8 small squares. Lay half of the pieces in casserole dish and pour milk and egg mixture over top of first layer. Layer rest of pieces on top and pour remaining batter over top. Bake in preheated oven for 25 minutes.

While casserole is baking, melt stick of butter on medium heat on stove. Whisk in sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon until combined. Lower heat to low to keep warm while casserole finishes.

After the 25 minutes, remove casserole from oven and pour brown sugar sauce over casserole. Place back in oven for another 5 minutes. Serve with any additional cream cheese icing and brown sugar sauce drizzled over top.

Tip: when you put the casserole back in with the brown sugar sauce, it may be a good idea to put a baking sheet under casserole dish to make sure the sauce doesn't bubble over into oven.