Elvis-Style Challah French Toast

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Fluffy challah bread is given the royal treatment in this decadent breakfast classic topped with peanuts, peanut butter, bananas, and bacon. This Elvis-Style Challah French Toast is an easy recipe that will majorly wow your friends and family.

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Is there anything better than breakfast for dinner? It was always such a treat as a kid, and now that I have a son of my own, I love surprising him occasionally with fun breakfast dishes at dinnertime.

When Foodiechats and the Georgia Peanut Commission challenged me to come up with a creative way to use these peanut protein shakes from Elmhurst, I knew I wanted to make something special. And when I think of peanuts and peanut butter, my mind inevitably goes to The King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley.

This isn’t the first time I took inspiration from Elvis’ famous peanut butter, bacon, and banana sandwich. These Elvis-Style Frozen Bananas were a huge hit (and oh so easy!) a few years ago. You just can’t beat that fabulous sweet-and-salty combination.

I grew up eating French toast made with regular ol’ sandwich bread. Back when I was dating my now husband, he made French toast using challah bread for me, and I haven’t looked back since!

Challah is a super fluffy, eggy Jewish bread that is most often formed into beautiful loaves by braiding. It’s perfect for things like French toast and bread pudding because you can let it soak in goodness from batter ingredients without worrying about it getting too soggy.

For this particular recipe, I decided to forego the milk and vanilla extract that I’d typically use in a challah French toast recipe and whisked the vanilla bean peanut protein shake in with the eggs and cinnamon.

That’s right – the batter only requires 3 ingredients! If you were looking to keep this recipe even simpler, you could skip the toppings and just use this batter with your challah and you’d still have a fantastic French toast for breakfast. But let’s take it over-the-top, shall we?

After your batter is together, give each piece of bread a quick soak in the mixture. I like to press each piece down into the mixture for about 5 seconds per side.

Let the excess drip off back into the bowl, and fry ’em up on a preheated griddle that’s been lightly sprayed with oil and buttered. They sometimes take a while to brown, so be patient. That golden brown crust will be totally worth the wait. My pieces probably took about 5 minutes per side.

I like to set up a warming station as I’m cooking my French toast – I have the bowl of batter ready to go, and a baking sheet with a rack on top of it sitting in my oven, set to “keep warm”. If you don’t have that setting on your oven, set it to the lowest temperature it goes, usually around 150-200 degrees F.

If you have a stovetop griddle, that will work perfectly here. We have a small cast iron grill pan, but we usually use our Griddler for pancakes and French toast. If you have a cast iron skillet, that would work well, too. You can always do it in a non-stick skillet as well, but the other options would be my first recommendations.

Having a setup like this helps you to be able to cook up your French toast in batches and keep the first ones warm while you cook the remaining pieces. I like using a rack on the baking sheet so the bread doesn’t get soggy while it sits in the oven.

When it comes to topping this French toast, I dusted it with powdered sugar, sprinkled on a few sliced bananas, pieces of crispy thick-cut bacon, and coarsely chopped salted peanuts.

I then drizzled everything with pure maple syrup and some homemade peanut butter (just unsalted peanuts blended up in the Vitamix until creamy).

This breakfast knocked it out of the park. It was deliciously indulgent, and my family loved every bite. What are your favorite breakfast foods? I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below!

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Recipe for Elvis-Style Challah French Toast

If you try out this recipe, please come back and give it a star rating and comment below. I’d love to know what you think of it!

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