Crock Pot Caramel Pecan French Toast

The dish can be a breakfast treat or an end of the meal dessert! 

Either way the gooey caramel and crunchy pecans are bound to satisfy your sweet tooth.

Howdy folks!

How is your week treating ya?  Ours has been fairly uneventful minus the babe teething {hello, 4:45 a.m. wake up call!}.  She spend most of yesterday laying on me with a fever.  Her top four teeth are coming through AT THE SAME TIME and finally yesterday I noticed one of them popped through.  Here's to the rest following suite soon!

Poor baby.  She still is pretty darn happy.

In other life changing news {yes, it is life changing for me}, our new washer and dryer get delivered today.  This has been a long time coming.  I have been without a dryer since before Christmas.  Once the holidays were over it was fun for about a hot minute air-drying all our clothes.  Now two months in, I am OVER it, and so happy that my pioneer days are ending later today.  Seriously, laundry for five people is a joke.



One night last week, after hanging, folding and cussing out my last load of laundry I made breakfast for dinner for the kids and I.  Usually that involves eggs in various forms {scrambled, dippy's, etc.}, pancakes, homemade muffins or hash browns.

I had been dreaming up a crock pot French toast for quite awhile and earlier in the day planned to make it happen.  This recipe couldn't be easier!

What a great dish to make for a breakfast crowd or even serve for dessert - it really can go both ways.  My kids went a tad bonkers for this.  Maybe it was the ramekins I served it in?  Or maybe they were tired of my typical side pancake or muffin and relished in the change.  Not sure, but it was a hit!

What makes this dish easy is you can use whatever bread you have on hand.  A stale loaf of quality French bread is ideal, but I simply pulled out half a loaf of whole wheat bread we had in our fridge and used that.

You know the older, the better!  The egg custard mixture will soak up all the dryness and make it the most delicious French toast ever.  And, well, the caramel/pecan mixture just puts it over the top.

Do I dare say it tastes a BIT like monkey bread?

Feel free to double this recipe to make a larger batch, by simply putting it all in a larger crock pot.  I was only feeding 4....so I opted for this nice sized batch.

And as usual if you are not a pecan fan, try using slice almonds, or chopped walnuts, whatever you have on hand.  You won't offend me.  Or, if you want to omit the nuts all together, I guess that is fine too.

Crock Pot Caramel Pecan French Toast
Print this Recipe!

1/2 loaf of bread, cubed
4 eggs
1 1/2 c. milk
1 t. vanilla
1 t. almond extract
1 t. cinnamon
3/4 stick of unsalted butter, cubed
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. chopped pecans

1.  In a large bowl mix together eggs, milk, vanilla, almond extract and cinnamon.  Drop in the cubed bread and mix together well.  Cover and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.
2.  When ready to cook, spray the inside of a medium-sized crock pot with cooking spray.
3.  Sprinkle 3/4 c. of the brown sugar into the bottom of the crock pot, along with 1/2 stick of the cubed butter and 3/4 c. of the chopped pecans.
4.  Pour in the soaked bread mixture.
5.  Sprinkle the remaining brown sugar, pecans and butter on the top of the bread mixture.
6.  Cook on LOW for 3 hours or HIGH for 1.5 hours.
7.  French toast will be done when the mixture is pulling away from the sides of the crock pot and bubbly.  Do not over cook as the dish will burn fairly easily.