Make-Ahead Wild Blueberry Stuffed French Toast: A Brunch Favorite

This make-ahead Wild Blueberry Stuffed French Toast casserole is perfect for Easter brunch! It’s neither overly sweet nor too eggy and has the perfect amount of crunch on the outside and smooth texture inside. It is delicious with a drizzle of Wild Blueberry syrup!

Stuffed French Toast Slice

In our family, holidays are celebrated with food. It’s just how it has always been. Holidays never go by without multiple phone calls going back and forth between family members about the menu; discussing who is hosting and making which dish. Does that happen in your family, too?

With Easter just a week or so away, the menu conversations are currently in full swing! Since we get together with my mother and sister each week for Sunday dinner, we are all pretty happy anytime we can throw brunch into the mix. Brunch food to me is the best of both worlds. You get the savory stuff mixed with the sweet – all at the same time! From my husband’s overstuffed omelets to my mom’s famous sautéed potatoes, brunch is definitely my favorite meal. And if there’s something sweet that involves bread, well that is the perfect combination.

While I was baking this ricotta-stuffed French toast that is bursting with Wild Blueberries my husband was pretty much salivating. He hardly ever gets to eat French toast! The house smelled amazing and even though it was just a regular Tuesday afternoon, it felt like a holiday.

Wild Blueberry French Toast

I brought my Italian roots, my love for all things bread, and the intense flavor and versatility of delicious Wild Blueberries to this dish. As usual, the Wild Blueberries take center stage when it comes to flavor. During baking, they melt beautifully with the ricotta cheese (yes, there is cheese inside this French toast!) and create the perfect balance of sweetness, richness, and creaminess. With the natural sweetness of the ricotta and the Wild Blueberries you really don’t need to add much more sugar. I only used ¼ cup maple syrup for the whole recipe, plus a little turbinado sugar sprinkled on top before baking.

This is definitely a special occasion dish and would be the star of any Easter brunch feast! It’s kid-friendly and gorgeously topped with Wild Blueberry-infused maple syrup.

Enjoy!

Wild Blueberry French Toast

Wild Blueberry & Ricotta Stuffed French Toast Bake

As Spring Emerges, Health It Up!

With Danielle Omar, Registered Dietitian, Nutrition Consultant, and Founder of foodconfidence.com

Danielle Omar was inspired by food at a young age. “My mother is from the Bay of Naples, in Southern Italy, and we were always surrounded with delicious, nutritious food when I was a kid,” recalls Danielle. At the age of 16, Danielle’s mother gave her the responsibility for preparing family dinners, and that’s when her creative spark turned to flame.

Danielle and her mom

“I never opened a cookbook, I’d just open the refrigerator, see what was inside, and go from there,” recalls Danielle. Her mom might leave her a chicken as a starting point and Danielle would literally throw anything on that chicken – condiments, mustard, herbs, whatever. “I learned it was hard to mess it up,” she recalls. “And the more I experimented, the more my confidence grew.” That feeling of confidence is what inspired me to become a registered dietitian and start my blog, foodconfidence. I wanted to share my passion with others and help them in their journey to preparing and eating healthy, tasty meals.

Today, as author of a leading food blog, and with featured appearances on The Food Network, NBC and Fox, Danielle opens a cookbook fairly regularly (and shares a ton of great recipes on her popular blog) but her spirit of invention has not waned.

“I get really passionate about pumping up the nutritional value of standard recipes,” she says. “I’m also a vegetarian now, so I eat more vegetables than the average American.”

Here are some of Danielle’s suggestions to Health-Up a Recipe:

  • Add more fruit and veggies to your cheese and hors-d’oeuvre platters
  • When making tacos or quesadillas, try substituting that flour tortilla with a collard leafCollard leaf instead of tortilla
  • Add seeds to your salads
  • Instead of mayo or mustard, use hummus Us ehummus instead of mayo
  • Instead of tropical fruit, use berries, such as Wild Blueberries or raspberries
  • When making muffins or pancakes, substitute ground oats, flax seeds, shredded coconut or chia seeds for some of the flour
  • In baked goods, use applesauce instead of oil
  • In baked goods, substitute fruits like pureed banana, apple, or Wild Blueberries for traditional sweeteners (or a combination of them all)
  • Substitute standard noodles or white rice with quinoa
  • For Italian dishes that use pasta or spaghetti, use veggie pastas, penne or rotini, which are made with freshly pureed in-season vegetables
  • Always add more vegetables to your pasta meals to increase nutritionAdd more veggies!
  • Add dried fruit or frozen fresh Wild Blueberries instead of sugar to hot cereals like oatmeal
  • Stay away from sweetened yogurts. Use whole plain yogurt instead and sweeten with raisins, nuts and dried or frozen fruits
  • If a recipe calls for fruit, try substituting frozen Wild Blueberries – they are lower in sugar and have extensive health benefits
  • Try adding frozen Wild Blueberries to salad dressing recipes (check out Danielle’s recipe for Miso Salad Dressing we’ll be sharing next week!)

Danielle regularly shares her passion for food in the Wild Blueberry Blog. See her recent recipes and be on the look out for her new recipe for Wild Blueberry Miso Vinaigrette.

Danielle Omar

Mardi Gras King Cake

Wild Appetizers (for Super Bowl, but good any time of the year.)

Wild Blueberry Quesadillas with Rosemary & Jalapeno Jelly