Jeff was out of town Saturday; I thought that I could just fix myself some cereal for breakfast or I could take advantage of the fact that my glucose tolerance test results weren't in yet and have what would maybe be my last sweet, carb-y breakfast for a while if it turns out I have gestational diabetes (unlikely, but one needs to prepare). The fact that I had two near stale pieces of no-knead bread and a raft of new french toast recipes in The Improvisational Cook handy made cereal seem unappealing. Sally Schneider's savory french toast recipe in A New Way to Cook is my favorite french toast of all time, so I figured her chocolate french toast would be worth a try.

I did not have high quality bittersweet chocolate, but I did have leftover chocolate chips, so I improvised (ha!) and melted them in some milk and beat them in with some eggs and vanilla. Schneider recommends soaking the bread for four hours,but I cannot imagine that is a good idea. The hardy bread I was using was practically falling apart after fifteen minutes, and a less-sturdy bread would be mush in no time. Great if you want a pile of mush, but the mushy piece that broke off was much less appealing than the whole slices of bread, which got crisp on the outside and just custardy on the inside. And the chocolate flavor was not super-pronounced, but that was probably due to the amount and type of chocolate I used- I'll try this again when I have mad hunks of Scharffen-Berger lying around. (Or maybe even buy a bar for this purpose.)

She also recommends serving this with a pile of granulated sugar, which is silly. It is much more delicious with maple syrup, though I gave the sugar a try for one bite.

I am hoping I do not have the gestational diabetes for many reasons, obviously, but giving up the occasional french toast indulgence is for sure one of them.