Over Night French Toast

So, what can be better than waking up on Christmas morning, finding Santa has come? Having breakfast ready to be put in the oven!

I found many baked french toast recipes, but made many changes to them, so I can't say this is just from one person...it's from many. 

Ingredients
1 c brown sugar
1/2 cup butter (1 stick--I use salted butter)
About 2 TBSP water
Bread--I used 1 loaf of French bread cut into 12 slices.
1 1/2 c milk (I used buttermilk)
6 eggs, beaten
1/4 c white sugar (I omit this sometimes**)
1 tsp vanilla* (see note below)
1 tsp cinnamon, and more to sprinkle with

Place brown sugar, butter and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil for 1 minute. Take off heat and pour into a greased 11x13 pan. Add bread to the pan in a single layer, and allow the sugar mixture to cool. NOTE: If using regular bread, you can put two slices on top of each other. In a separate bowl, mix milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon together. Pour egg mixture on top of the bread and sugar in the 11x13 pan, then sprinkle with more cinnamon. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Take out of refrigerator 1/2 an hour before baking. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes--but keep an eye on it.

*Update 03/09/10: I have tried different flavorings in this dish, and love it! Most recently I tried a maple extract, and the flavor was magnificent!


VERDICT: Fantastic, and easy! We got up, I found out that Santa came to me--Jeff said he saw him early this morning--and popped this into the oven while we getting ready for the day. If we had kids, this would be a great breakfast to wait for while they playing with their gifts from Santa.

Also, I am thinking I could use Texas Toast bread in the future, and double stack them!

EDIT: Obviously, we couldn't eat this all by ourselves, so we had to refrigerate the leftovers. I wanted to let you know that they keep well!! This tastes great the next day!