By Mike
It’s March Madness time, and that means basketb–er, French Toast. As regular readers are aware, this year we’re trying French Toast recipes that we’ll seed into a final four-style showdown to determine the best of the best next March. One great thing about March Madness on the basketball court is the history of rags-to-riches stories of lesser-known teams rising up and taking down the giants of the game. Sadly, as bluebloods Kansas and Kentucky get set to square off tomorrow for the 2012 NCAA basketball title, there will be no Cinderella on the court this year.
But fear not, French Toast fans, as Eat, Play, Love brings you the first Cinderella story in the battle for French Toast Supremacy.
We were honored to be chosen by the Shiksa in the Kitchen to contribute a recipe to her virtual Passover Potluck, so we decided to make Kosher French Toast. Now, we’re not Jewish and have no experience with Kosher cooking, so we had quite a lot of nerves for this one. How would this recipe fare under the bright lights of Tori’s wonderful blog? In college basketball parlance, we expected this recipe to perform something like a 13-seed.
The recipe details and story can be found here, but let’s just say we got off to a rocky start. We didn’t realize when we started that there was a distinction between foods that are “Kosher” and foods that are “Kosher for Passover” so it took several grocery stores and finally the internet to track down all our ingredients. Then we had to take on the cake, not a good matchup for us, without the benefit of a leavening agent. Things weren’t looking up for this underdog recipe when we struggled getting it out of the pan. Fortunately, we had Mr. N and Miss A on our team.
The comeback began when we tasted the little burnt drippings from the edge of the pan. It got more interesting when we sampled the stuff that got stuck in the pan when we took it out. This plucky little recipe was starting to look pretty good. Still, there was this mangled mess of gooey, doughy, eggy scraps on the plate as Kristy began to slice it. They may not have looked quite right, but I couldn’t stop eating them.
As the clock ticked away, Kristy was taking pictures of the process and the finished product, and I kept picking at the scraps. By the time we finally sat down to eat the finished product, it was clear this recipe was going to be a winner.
There’s still much French Toast to be made in our tournament, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Passover French Toast in our final four next year. In the meantime, head on over to enjoy The Shiksa’s Passover Potluck and please follow along with us in our search for the best French Toast. Thanks again Tori! It was an honor.
Eat, Play, Love 
You certainly are adventurous! I’m quite impressed and I became very hungry just reading this! How interesting to have used a cake for french toast! I think I’d be picking away at it as well!
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Thanks! The drippings were goooooood….
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What a good job…I’m very impressed.
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Thanks Karen!
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Such a clever idea, Mike. I was really sad when my Buckeyes got kicked out of the tournament, but there’s always next year right? Would have liked Kansas to win since they beat us, but oh well! And seriously…that French toast sounds amazing. I can’t tell you how badly I’d like to grab a piece out of the computer screen.
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A Buckeye fan, eh? I’ve always been a closet Buckeye fan ’cause I hate Michigan, but that’s mostly when it comes to football.
Don’t like Kentucky, can’t cheer for Bail $elf, I was hoping for a power outage. Well, if past history’s any guide, Calipari will have to have the season’s records vacated before too long in any case.
Boy I’m salty in this reply.
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What a fun post! This French Toast looks incredible and I am so impressed with the authentically made Kosher for Passover sponge cake. It’s fantastic that you teach your children to embrace other cultures through the food. Wouldn’t the world be a nicer place if everyone taught their children this?
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Thanks Geni–it’s been fun to go through this with the kids.
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Great job on the kosher French Toast! I’m heading over to the Shiska to check out her blog. 🙂 My boys and I love French Toast, so looking forward to the contenders!
Great post, Mike and Kristy!
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Thanks Lisa, send along a recipe if you have one you want us to try.
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I really enjoy reading your blog, it is clever, well written and always has delicious recipes! So I wanted to nominate you for the Versatile Blogger Award! I know that you are familiar with it and have been nominated previously, however, you are very inspiring to me as a new blogger and I wanted to let you know that!
http://whataboutthepie.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/versatile-blogger-award/
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Thanks Jackie, and good luck to you in the blogosphere–we’ve had so much fun with it.
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Oy vey, those look good.
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A testament to my better half’s skills with the camera I think. These were messy.
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Nice job to you all – so fun to go out of your comfort zone to try something a little different. And I can’t wait to see all the fun french toast recipes coming up.
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The great thing about going out of our comfort zone with the blog has been all the ingredients we find that we can bring back to the things we like–we were talking about that the other day. We wind up with partly-used jars of all kinds of things like saffron and orange blossom water and agave syrup and so we get to look for uses for them all over the place.
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I love being surprised by a recipe that was off to a rough start. Heading over to check out your Cinderella 🙂
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Thanks Sawsan–enjoy your visit with the Shiksa.
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How fun to follow you in your tournament of french toast! That has to be the first time I’ve ever put all those words in one sentence! And congratulatons on being included in the “Shiksa’s Passover Potluck” cookbook! That’s quite a delightful honor. Now I have more links I really want to follow…I really do need to quit my job! 🙂 I’m very happy for you. You make a delightful contribution to my reading day! Debra
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Yes, we are excited to be part of the potluck, and yes, Tori’s a great follow! Thanks for the note.
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Very interesting recipe, Kristy and Mike. We know Jewish households who have two kitchens in their home, or even double of every appliance.
The French toast has all one would expect, a nice soft centre and crispy outside. Nicely done.
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Two kitchens would have been nice for our chopped challenge!
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Be careful what you wish for, Mike: double the mess!!!!
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oh follow you I will! French toast is my favorite thing in the whole wide world you might say!
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Hopefully we’ll find some French Toast recipes that meet with your learned taste buds.
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You did so well! If that was me I would have been completely stressed. I have never cooked Kosher food nor am I familiar with the difference between Kosher and passover Kosher. I have great respect for the Jewish people but I’ve never been introduced to their cuisine. Great effort! xx
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We weren’t either–this blog’s been so much fun for us with things we’ve learned.
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Well, as a former NBA player myself (in my dreams – truly, I actually dream about basketball – who does that?), March Madness sounds pretty awesome to me. Strangely, for a country that invented the game, BB is not particularly big here in Canada – seems all gets sacrificed to the mighty puck… ;-).
Visited the Shiksa last night to admire your delicious sponge toast… what a novel and delicious looking recipe – the orange is swoon-worthy. I had no idea about the different kosher distinctions either… well, I’d say you pulled it off beautifully creating a Cinderella story of your own.
Great post Chef Dad!
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In my recurring sports dream I’m rounding first base and suddenly I can’t get any traction in the dirt and I’m going as fast as I can, only I’m basically spinning my wheels and finally I’m on all fours dragging and crawling myself through the dust and dirt as the other team throws the ball back in from the outfield and jogs over to tag me out. I’ve never tried to psychoanalyze that one.
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I know that dream. I have the same one in the swimming pool. I dive in, start rotating my arms and kicking my legs but I’m not moving. I triple the intensity and effort but I can’t go forward – my body is heavy and I’m sinking… ;-(
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I never doubted for a second that you would have a brilliant result – even after battling out of the starting blocks – well done!
🙂 Mandy
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Glad you had faith…we were nervous!
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That looks like a very different style of French toast – even making the “toast” from scratch – that’s true dedication :D, though perhaps definitely not something one could whip up in 10 minutes for a quick breakfast – no matter, will save it for lazy sunday brunches!
That picture of ChefDad and Miss A cutting oranges is just adorable 😀
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Thanks Charles! Miss A is on my lap right now and she says she hopes you try the French toast some time.
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That sure is a very filling French Toast! I wanna have some for breakfast
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I filled up on the sponge cake scraps before we actually ate, so yes, it was filling!
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I agree with you Mike, this dish looks like a winner to me. Winner, Winner, french toast dinner lol. And just look at Miss A in these photos.. she is certainly fully of charisma, just like Kristy :).
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Miss A owns me. Unfortunately she knows it.
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Hilarious – this is so impressive that you made French Toast that is Kosher for Passover!! If it tasted good, that is even more impressive. I was not feeling well today, and could barely make the matzoh ball soup for next week’s sedar. I never got to the Matzah Roca that I wanted to make – hopefully I can get to it next weekend if I am feeling better than today…it is one of the best Passover recipes there is! AWESOME job!!!
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Thanks Dawn–we’ll keep our eyes open for the recipe and I suspect we may well try Kosher again at some point in our virtual travels.
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This looks like a really decadent french toast.. what fun to participate in a tournament, I’ll be rooting for you!! xo Smidge
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Thanks–I still think Bermuda french toast is the favorite, but we’ll see.
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The girls have french toast almost every morning while we were in Mexico — so I’ll have to make this for them to bring back memories of our trip. I will need to find a short cut to find the ingredients from my Jewish friends. Looks like this is going to be another tough competition!
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We’ll have lots of recipes for you to pick from this year, that’s for sure. You can’t really go wrong with French toast in my book.
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A clever post, Kristy, and loved the March Madness metaphor. Thanks for the tale, the link to what promises to be a great blog, and the opportunity for me to toss a little aliteration your way. (Twice!) 🙂
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Supremely stoked you stopped by! Seriously!
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