Sugar Maple Baked French Toast

For breakfast this past weekend, I baked up a French Toast casserole on my Yoder Smokers pellet grill.  Here's how it all went together.

The night before, I sliced up a loaf of French bread into roughly 20 slices.  I lined a well buttered 9x13 Pyrex dish with the bread slices, over lapping slightly.  Next I mixed up the egg mixture which consisted of:

• 8 large eggs
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• Dash salt

Whisk all the ingredients together well and pour over the bread.  Cover and let that sit over night.

The next morning I fired up the Yoder to 350 degrees with some Sugar Maple pellets.  It was a pretty cold morning so I ended up setting the grill to 375 to keep the temperature around 350.

While the grill was preheating I topped the French bread with a brown sugar pecan topping consisting of:

• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Here's what it looked like ready to throw on the grill.

This was baked at 350 until golden brown.  Here's the finished product.

A slice of that topped off with some hot syrup, made a great breakfast on a cold Kansas morning.