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A twist on traditional french toast made with fruit bread and with added orange zest. Perfect for breakfast served with maple syrup and fresh fruit.
I consider myself extremely lucky that no one in my household has a food allergy or intolerance. Sadly I know far too many people who do and it can really impact on their lives, constantly checking labels, asking about ingredients, ensuring they don’t accidentally eat something they shouldn’t and then dealing with the (sometimes life threatening) consequences if they slip up.
Not really being faced with dealing with food allergies, means that I don’t always know what to offer friends to eat that are. My go-to baked good for any gluten free friends is always meringues but I guess you can’t serve them all the time 🙂 When Genius Gluten Free invited me to sample some of their products I thought it would be a great idea. I’d love to learn to do more free from baking, but with a long list of other things on my to-bake list it’s going to be a long while before I get around to perfecting any. Knowing what’s available to buy and, more importantly, what tastes good to offer to my gluten free friends seemed like a great idea.
Genius pancakes served with maple syrup and berries
The hamper I was sent contained pancakes, crumpets, spiced fruit loaf and blueberry muffins and all-in-all we were really impressed with what we sampled. I’d not tried gluten free versions of any of these products before and really didn’t know what to expect but we enjoyed all of them. I had to whip the blueberry muffins away from the boys to make sure everyone else actually got a chance to try some!
Genius blueberry muffin
In our opinion the flavour of all of the products was equivalent to any gluten filled products I’ve brought before and quite simply if we hadn’t have known that they were gluten free I don’t think we would have guessed. The texture is a little different, slightly more crumbly (especially the crumpets) but once they’ve been toasted it’s less noticeable. The only exception to this was the blueberry muffin where we really couldn’t notice any difference in texture at all (I guess because muffins are more naturally crumbly anyway).
As much as we enjoyed sampling everything, I also had a great time photographing it all – I tell you, those Genius products are very photogenic so if you’re a fan of Instagramming your food then I’d stock up just for that if nothing else 🙂
Genius toasted crumpets with butter
As well as sampling the products, I was asked to come up with a serving suggestion for a delicious gluten free breakfast. Once I’d had a little try of everything I decided that the fruit bread would make great french toast. I’ve adapted the traditional french toast recipe a little by leaving out the cinnamon and vanilla (there’s already plenty of cinnamon flavour coming through from the bread) and adding a little orange zest instead which perfectly compliments the other flavours in the bread. I then served it up with maple syrup and fresh berries – oh yum!
Free From/Suitable For…
- Suitable for Vegetarians
- Gluten-Free
- Nut-Free
- Soy-Free
These can be made dairy free by substituting the milk for a dairy free alternative such as soy milk, or simply leaving it out and adding an extra egg. You’ll also need to replace the butter with a flavourless oil or dairy free spread.
The ingredients for this recipe are easily available free from all these allergens. However, please ensure you double-check allergen information for all ingredients.
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Fruity French Toast
INGREDIENTS
- 8 slices Genius Spiced Fruit Loaf - any other spiced fruit bread will work well too
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tbsp milk
- ½ orange - zest only - finely grated
- A little butter for greasing the frying pan
INSTRUCTIONS
- Put the eggs (2), milk (2 tbsp) and orange zest (½ orange) into a large shallow bowl (I used a pasta bowl as the shape is perfect). Beat it with a fork until everything is mixed up nicely.
- Place a slice of bread into the mix and leave it for a few seconds to soak up some of the mixture, turn it over so both sides are covered in the egg mixture.
- Heat a large frying pan over a medium heat. Once hot use a sheet of kitchen towel to carefully spread a little butter over the surface of the pan (to help stop the french toast sticking) and then place as many slices of the egged bread into the pan as you can fit without them being crowded. Cook them until golden brown and then flip them over and cook the other side until golden brown (this really doesn't take long so keep a close eye on it).
- Repeat until all of your slices are cooked and then serve with maple syrup and fresh berries.
NOTES
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION
Any nutritional information provided is the estimated nutritional information per serving. Please refer to my guide to Charlotte’s Lively Kitchen nutritional information if you would like to learn more about how this is calculated.
Shelley Jessup says
I’ve been looking for new breakfast ideas for the weekend treats & I am bookmarking this to try thank you so much!
Charlotte Oates says
Great! I hope you enjoy it x
Charlie Mace says
Oooooh… now I’m hungry for breakfast. Gorgeous pics!
Charlotte Oates says
Me too! Maybe I should get off to bed now so breakfast will be here sooner 🙂
Mads says
I am intolerant to gluten so it’s great to see recipes like this! x
Charlotte Oates says
Thanks Mads, I’m really glad you like the recipe. I follow quite a few other GF blogs if you’d like me to recommend some more for you x
Vicki Montague says
Ooo! Great post ;)! Genius are brilliant aren’t they and Lucinda who started it all is an inspiration. I’m glad you enjoyed their products and I love the idea of the French toast. It looks amazing!
Charlotte Oates says
People will be saying the same about you before long 🙂 I was so impressed with the products, we wouldn’t have guessed they were GF once they were toasted.
Eb Gargano / easypeasyfoodie.com says
Really interesting post, Charlotte. Like you I don’t have any food intolerances or allergies, but I know lots of people who do and it’s really nice to know of good products you can serve which can be enjoyed by all. I love what you’ve done with the fruit bread too – that French toast looks sooo good! Can I ask, how do you achieve your pouring shots – have you got one of your little boys well trained or do you use something technical or are you just really coordinated?!? Thanks for linking up to #CookBlogShare 🙂 Eb x
Charlotte Oates says
Thanks Eb
I did the pouring shot all by myself. It’s not set up hugely differently to how I set up all of my pictures but I have to adjust all of the camera settings to deal with the fact there’s movement (much faster shutter speed and then a smaller depth of field and higher ISO to ensure there’s enough light. I also manually focus the camera so it isn’t trying to figure out where to focus when I click and miss the shot). I’ve been asked by a few people in the past how I take them so I’ll have to get on and write a post about it.
Eb Gargano / easypeasyfoodie.com says
Thanks Charlotte – this is really helpful. A post on this in the future would be fab, too! Xx