An age-old recipe of mine – the easiest French toast you’ll ever make, almost. You just have to have some of that King’s Hawaiian bread on hand, and a can of pineapple. Along with milk, eggs, butter and brown sugar. I sprinkled the top with cinnamon.
Years ago, 2007 to be exact, I wrote this up on my blog – during a time when I’d actually broken a bone in my foot and had to use crutches and/or a wheelchair. I wrote up some posts during that 12-week period but didn’t have pictures. I just wrote up the story and provided the recipe. I located some photo on the web that kinda-sorta looked like it. So, I’m giving you an updated post about it and oodles of pictures. I expect most readers don’t go back into the ancient writing here on this blog anyway. I never fixed this for Dave, my DH, because he was a diabetic, and this was just loaded with sugar. Is loaded with sugar. But oh-so-good.
Do grocery stores across America have King’s Hawaiian bread? I have no idea. It’s a very sweet, but super-tender eggy yeast bread, sweetened some with pineapple juice, so it is believed. There are any number of copycat recipes on the web if you’re interested – see this one if you want to try to make the bread from scratch. Otherwise, buy an eggy bread or Challah, and add more sugar to the recipe below. I used the mini sub rolls. 
Picture of the actual roll is at left. My grocery store only had hot dog buns and these. Some markets have their sliders, or their regular loaf bread, or nice dinner rolls. King’s Hawaiian makes any number of different types of bread shapes. Glancing at the package I assumed (correctly) that one package of these sub rolls, placed cut side up would be just right for a 9×13 pan full of this french toast. And it fit perfectly, with just a tiny bit to spare.
The brown sugar, butter and pineapple gets heated up on the stovetop, just until the sugar melts. Then it goes into the Pyrex dish (no need to butter it). That’s the photo at right. Then you mix up the egg-milk mixture and dip the bread into that mixture and place them just so in the dish on top of all that pineapple. My recipe called for baking it immediately, and that’s what I’ve always done. But this time, I was taking it to a Sunday brunch, and would not have time to 
make it that morning, so I mixed it all up and left it in the refrigerator overnight. I still had some of the milk mixture left over, so once I got to our hostess’ house, that got poured in on top and after sitting out for about 45 minutes I baked it.
Ideally, when serving it, you’ll use a spatula and scrape up a lot of the pineapple and you can serve it upside down – or right side up. No matter, other than the plain top isn’t all that exciting. Hence I sprinkled the top with a tiny bit of cinnamon. Not in the recipe . . . but I did it anyway. If you have a crew of hungry kids, this won’t serve but about 4-5 people, but as part of a brunch, with other foods, this will serve 6-8 for sure.
What’s GOOD: how easy it is to make. Overnight chill? Fine. No time to chill? Fine too. Feeds a crowd of people providing you have other food available (fruit, smoothies, bacon, sausage). Doesn’t even need anything on top of it – no syrup or sauce or anything. You could serve it with maple syrup, but I almost think that would be sugar overkill! Kids adore this, I guarantee it.
What’s NOT: only that nothing in this is good for you – maybe just the milk and canned pineapple. It’s sweet, lubricated with butter and egg. But gosh, it’s ever so good!
Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click on link to open recipe in MC)
* Exported from MasterCook *
Pineapple Upside-Down French Toast
Recipe By: Adapted from Gourmet Magazine, back in the 1990s, I think.
Serving Size: 8
1/4 cup unsalted butter — (1/2 stick)
1/4 cup brown sugar — firmly packed
3/4 cup crushed pineapple — pack & drain well (I use 2 of the short cans)
2 whole eggs
1 1/2 cups milk — combo of low fat and full fat is fine; just don’t use nonfat
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 slices King’s Hawaiian bread — or egg bread or Challah (I used 6 mini-sub rolls)
2 pinches cinnamon — to sprinkle on top
Notes: If making this with Challah or egg bread, add some sugar to the milk-egg-mixture. You can use fake brown sugar, some egg substitute and low fat milk if desired. Obviously it won’t be quite so tasty, or decadent, either!
1. Preheat oven to 400°F. In a saucepan melt butter over moderate heat and stir in sugar and pineapple, stirring until sugar is dissolved.
2. In a shallow bowl whisk together eggs, milk and salt.
3. In a baking dish, 9 x 13 inches, spread pineapple mixture evenly over bottom. Dip bread slices into milk mixture in batches and arrange in one layer on top of pineapple mixture. (I place the rolls white side up.) If you have extra spaces in the pan, just mush the bread a little to squeeze in some more slices. It’s also fairly easy to mix up a little more egg/milk mixture to make the dish feed more people if you have more bread than you thought. Sprinkle the top with just a couple pinches of cinnamon.
4. Bake French Toast in middle of oven for 20-35 minutes (depending on the thickness of the bread), or until bread is golden brown. Cool in pan for one minute and serve. The French Toast will have risen up high (puffy) and it’s really nice to serve this before it deflates, which it will do as soon as it cools down. You can serve this with maple syrup or with sweetened fresh fruit, but the pineapple is the flavor you want to shine through. It really doesn’t need any embellishments.
Per Serving: 264 Calories; 12g Fat (39.8% calories from fat); 7g Protein; 34g Carbohydrate; trace Dietary Fiber; 97mg Cholesterol; 237mg Sodium.
Leave a Comment!