Baked Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast

Since we were in Ohio for Christmas, we weren't able to have our traditional cream cheese roll-ups. So as soon as we got back I made sure we had at least a variation of them. The normal recipe is just putting the cream cheese filling into white bread then rolling it up. But I decided to take it a bit further by baking it in a 9 x 13 dish instead.

I'm really not a fan of white bread at all. So I found some interesting bread called paska? I've never heard of it before but I thought it would work out since it was a type of sweet bread. It turned out to be pretty similar to challah, which is what I had been looking for.

Baked Cream Cheese Stuffed French Toast
adapted from my dad's Cream Cheese Roll-ups recipe

1 loaf of paska bread (or any other bread really)

Cream cheese filling:
2 8oz packages of cream cheese
2 eggs
1/2 sugar
(combine this in a bowl)

Cinnamon sugar topping:
1 1/2 sticks of butter
sugar and cinnamon (I mixed this to taste with a starting point of 1/2 tbsp cinnamon to 1/2 cup sugar. I thought there needed to be more cinnamon overall though)

I first buttered my baking dish, a 9 x 13 dish. Then I layered slices of the bread evenly on the bottom. Then I spread the cream cheese mixture over top. I sprinkled a generous amount of cinnamon sugar over that. More bread is added to cover the top. Then, I poured the melted butter/cinnamon sugar mixture as evenly as I could over top.

At this point you can refrigerate it over night. If not, place it in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Allow to cool and enjoy!

That evening we had a mock Thanksgiving Day feast. My dad loves turkey but we never seem to have any other time than at Thanksgiving. So we went through the preparations and with some Jenny-O turkey we were able to pull it off! No pumpkin pie for dessert, but we have enough chocolate to last us years!

Also, look what I got:

DARK CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER! I am truly in heaven. I honestly ate half of it the very night I got it. I spread it over the last of the paska bread and also added vanilla frosting. Yeah, I know it's weird. Dipping pretzels into it is truly divine!!

I just love that cute little monkey on the side!