Receta A healthy day-after-Halloween breakfast: Baked Pumpkin Chocolate French Toast with Bananas
While I love Halloween just as much as anyone, what I can’t stand are all the unhealthy sugary snacks that are slowly creeping into my home like a bunch of hairy spiders. It’s truly become my Nightmare on Elm Street! Just the other day, the Halloween cookies I bought as a special treat, literally disappeared overnight. Maybe a poltergeist took them!
Wanting to combat the sugar laden garbage that we’re inundated with, I thought I’d come up with a healthy breakfast dish for the night after Halloween using TruMoo chocolate milk, pumpkin puree, and bananas. It’s sweet, uses seasonal flavors like chocolate and pumpkin, but is nutritious, too!
What’s so Halloween-ish about chocolate milk? Chocolate milk – well, usually hot chocolate – is a drink that’s consumed during the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) celebrations in Mexico and South America that also happen this time of year. Chocolate is native to Mesoamerica, and during pre-Hispanic times, the ancients drank their chocolate as a hot and spicy drink. That’s probably why so many Mexican chocolate drinks have a healthy dose of cinnamon!
Healthing up French Toast
Keeping chocolate milk with cinnamon in mind, used TruMoo chocolate milk as the base of my healthy French toast. Did you know that one 8-ounce serving of TruMoo provides as much calcium as five cups of broccoli and as much potassium as a small banana and has no high fructose syrup? TruMoo also provides eight essential nutrients that kids need for critical development stages, which makes it a nutritional win-win for the entire family. TruMoo also comes fresh from your trusted dairy and does not contain artificial growth hormones.
Since TruMoo chocolate milk already contains just the right amount of sugar, I added the healthy goodness of pumpkin to the recipe. Both are filled with fiber and all sorts of minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants. Instead of going with lots of eggs, I cut back and used a combination of whole eggs and egg whites.
I decided to bake my healthy Pumpkin Chocolate French Toast instead of frying it up in a pan for two reasons. One, baking is always healthier than frying since you don’t need to add all that extra butter to your pan or skillet while cooking. And two, as a mom, I’m tired of watching everyone eat while I’m slaving away at the stovetop. By the time I get to the table, everyone’s done eating!
While I know many people cannot have French toast without a dab of butter (or buttery spread) and syrup, you can keep it to a minimum. Just add the littlest dab of butter and a drizzle of syrup. The bananas and TruoMoo chocolate milk add so much sweetness that you really don’t need much syrup at all.
Finally, you can make this gluten free by using a bread like Udi’s Gluten Free raisin bread. It’s my favorite gluten free bread for making French Toast.
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Baked Pumpkin Chocolate French Toast
Recipe inspired by Family Fresh Cooking
Ingredients
Cooking spray
- 6 pieces whole wheat bread or 8 pieces gluten free bread (store bought)
- 2 large eggs
- 1/3 cup egg whites
- 1/2 cup TruMoo chocolate milk
- 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided
- 2 bananas
- 6 small pats butter or buttery spread (optional)
- Real maple syrup for drizzling (optional)
Directions
Place rack at the top of oven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spray large cookie sheet pan with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, egg whites, pumpkin puree, chocolate milk, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Pour into a shallow dish or pie plate.
Dip each piece of bread (both sides) in egg mixture. Place bread on sheet pan. If there is any egg mixture left after all pieces of bread have been dipped, evenly pour it on to bread in pan. Let bread soak in egg mixture for 5 minutes.
Slice bananas thinly and place pieces on top of bread. Evenly sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon over bread slices.
Place pan in oven and bake for 20 minutes until bread starts to turn golden and bananas start to get translucent. Bread will be a little crusty along edges at this point as well.
Remove from oven and top with butter and maple syrup, if desired. Serve hot.
Prep Time: 15 Minutes
Cook Time: 20 Minutes
Total Time: 35 Minutes
Servings: Makes 6 pieces of French Toast
Serving size: 1 to 2 pieces of French Toast
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.