Cupcake French Toast. Really.

When I was baking the cakes for the wedding cake, a couple of my recipes needed to be increased to have enough batter for the size of pans I was using.  I ended up with a little too much for some, and instead of throwing it out, baked cupcakes.  Almost four dozen cupcakes.  Chocolate, vanilla bean and bourbon-brown sugar.  My plan had been to take them to my former colleagues at the University, my dentist's office, to some friends.  But I didn't get them delivered before I got sick.  So other than those that the hubs took to his office, I still had a bunch of cupcakes.  Even stored in a large plastic container, they will get stale in time. 

Usually when I have stale cake, I think of cake balls.  Not this time.  I was thinking of French toast.  Not French toast cupcakes, mind you (although I do have a couple of recipes for those), but cupcake French toast.  Some time ago, Stef of Cupcake Project was musing about making French toast from cupcakes.  Although I don't think she ever went there, I did. 

It wasn't tragically regrettable, but I probably won't be repeating that experiment any time soon.  Should I change my mind about that, however, there are a couple of things I will do differently.  1) I'll add a little sugar to my egg custard.  Thinking the cupcakes would be sweet enough, I skipped this usual step.  2) I'll use cupcakes with a coarser crumb.  These had a very fine crumb which lent to a final texture I wasn't too crazy about.  And 3) I won't let them overcook while I answer the phone (it was the hubs).  Overcooked egg is extremely unpleasant to me.

I decided to slice them side-to-side instead of top-to-bottom.  (If they had that perfect cupcake shape, top-to-bottom would have been really cute though.)  They ended up not resembling cupcakes at all.

Before walking away to answer the phone.

Actually, I think they ended up looking like sausage patties and polenta.

Chocolate on the left (duh!); bourbon-brown sugar in the center and finally, vanilla bean.

I debated with myself on whether or not to use the chocolate cupcakes, convinced that their texture would lend to crumbling and the bourbon-brown sugar would be the best anyway.  Wrong.  While none of them were "bad"; none of them were really good either, but the chocolate was probably the best of them.  I only ate a bite of each.  My only true regret about this experiment is that I wasted a few drops of my precious maple syrup.  

And what of the rest of the cupcakes?  They're a work in progress.  We'll all have to wait and see how that turns out.