Americans call it French toast, British know it as eggy bread and French as pain perdu. In Spain it is known as torrijas and is practically eaten all year round – yet especially for Easter. Torrijas (aka Spanish bread pudding) is a nice way to use stale bread and it makes a delicious dessert that is so simple to prepare. There are, of course, many varieties of preparation. I already tried some and today I’d like to share one with you.

The ingredients you will need:

A loaf of stale bread, preferably home-made
3 to 4 eggs, depending on the size of your loaf
1/2l milk
1 cinnamon stick
Peel of 1 organically grown lemon
2 Tbsp sugar, or to taste (I use blond cane sugar)
Extra virgin olive oil
A couple of tablespoons maple syrup (or honey)
Ground cinnamon

Preparation:

Boil milk together with the cinnamon stick and lemon peel. Add sugar and stir to dissolve, set aside and let cool.
Cut the loaf of bread into thick slices, arrange them on the bottom of a bowl and pour some milk over them – not too much because you don’t want your slices to break – then dip them into the beaten eggs mixture and fry in some olive oil.
Arrange the torrijas on a plate, covered with paper towels, to absorb the excess fat. Stir some ground cinnamon into honey or maple syrup (you can even heat it up a bit, if desired) and pour it over torrijas. Serve warm or cold (the former being my preference) with the remaining milk which you can use for dipping torrijas.

If you like this dessert, you might also want to check my recipe for repapalos, which are torrijas cooked in aromatic milk – yet another example of simplicity and deliciousness going hand-in-hand.