Stuffed French Toast

Darren makes fun of me because at every single restaurant, I have my "go- to" dish. It's the dish I always order when I go there, because it's my fave! Very rarely is there a restaurant where I have 2-3 favorites, but it does happen! Darren is more of a "try a new dish everytime" kinda fella. Which is also good cause' then I can try his! lol. Well at IHOP I always get the Stuffed French Toast! Hey, why mess with the best? Well I was super excited when the grocery stores started selling IHOPs food in the freezer section! And that what we usually do, but I got a hankerin for them today and had a whopping total of ZERO on hand and so, I do what Chelsea's do best, and I IMPROVISED! Even I was impressed with myself! So yumm! Here we go!

You will need my recipe for the Universal Raspberry Sauce. This stuff is great! Depending on how long you cook it, it can be thin  like a syrup for drizzling on cakes or ice-cream, or even thick for a filling in a cake and any consistency in between! It's also safe to refrigerate for up to 2 weeks! (Go to the above link for more pix and more in depth directions if you get confused. I have a feeling I will be referring to that particular sauce quite often!)

Raspberry Sauce:

1, 12 oz Bag of Frozen Raspberries
1 C. Water
1/2 C. Sugar (more if you want it on the sweet side and not the tart.)
1 tsp. Cornstarch

1. Place the frozen raspberries, water and sugar in a saucepan and cook on medium high heat.
2. Boil the mixture until the raspberries have "melted down" and there are no more "chunks".
3. While the sauce is still liquidy, place the sauce in a sieve. Use a spatula to help get the sauce through the sieve easily, this part is to get rid of those nasty seeds. If you like lots of seeds, then you can skip this part. I usually end up putting about 1 tsp of the seeds back into the sauce, because I like just a little bit for the authenticity of it! ;D
4. Once the sauce has been thoroughly sieved, return the sauce back to the saucepan, add in the cornstarch and cook on medium or medium-low until desired consistency.

 For a syrup texture it might take 5-10 minutes and for a cake filling/ jelly like texture it may take 10-20 minutes. Just remember that the sauce will thicken a bit as it cools. Not alot, just a little.

Cream Cheese Filling:

Recipe respectfully from AllRecipes.com

4 oz (half a package) Cream Cheese, Softened
1 C. Powdered Sugar
1 tsp. Vanilla
2-4 Tbs. Milk, possibly more

1. Mix the softened cream cheese and powdered sugar in a bowl, you may need a mixer. Add in vanilla. Add in milk as needed to get a frosting like consistency. You will be plopping this into the center of piece of bread after all and you dont want it spreading all over the place. You want it to stay put.

French Toast:

Sadly I don't have an exact recipe for the stuff! I just mix a few eggs, a little milk, a dash of cinnamon and I'm ready to go. To make the Stuffed French Toast however, we're going to have to get a lil fancy with the bread!

 I used a large cookie cutter and cut out 2 pieces of bread. Then a dropped about 1 Tbs. of the Cream Cheese Filling into the center. Then a squished around all the edges with my fingers and then I used a fork to go around the edges to produce a more reliable seal!

After all those shenanigans you just dip both sides in the egg mixture and cook as you would "normal" French Toast!

Top with the Raspberry Sauce and a little Whip Cream because we're not on diets, right!? lol!

I even got a little lazy with a few and drizzled both the cream cheese filling and the raspberry sauce on "normal" French Toast and it tasted the EXACT same. So you don't need to get too fancy if you don't wanna! =D Hey, I'm NOT here to judge!