Baked French Toast Casserole

I am a big fan of overnight casseroles for Christmas morning breakfast. I shared our overnight Sausage Breakfast Casserole last year. That is the recipe I've made for about 4 Christmas mornings now for my family. I love that I mix it up the night before, throw it in the fridge, then pop it in the oven while we open gifts and its ready to eat when we are! I got my sausage ready for it yesterday! Recently, though, I've been experimenting with a few overnight Baked French Toast casseroles. So I thought I'd share so you have another idea option--not just for Christmas, but anytime! As with a lot of my recipes, they are pretty forgiving and can totally handle variations and such depending on what you have available or what your tastes are! I'll share a few ideas at the bottom. This recipe is kind of a bunch of mixing and matching from a couple different recipes and things we just thought we'd like better.

Baked French Toast Casserole
1 loaf crusty French Bread
8 eggs
2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup whipping cream (you could sub evaporated milk, half and half, or maybe even regular milk)
1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp vanilla

Crumble Topping: 
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup butter

Grease a 9x13 pan. Cut bread into large cubes and evenly distribute in the pan. Mix together eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla. Pour evenly over bread.

Stir around a bit to make sure and coat all the bread. Cover tightly and store in the fridge several hours or overnight. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, sugar, and cinnamon for topping. Cut in butter until uniform--will be coarse. Store in the fridge until needed.

When you're ready to bake the casserole, preheat the oven to 350F (180C). Remove casserole from fridge and sprinkle crumble topping over it.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour (this depends if you want a softer or firmer texture). Can serve with syrup for drizzling over top, but it is plenty sweet without it, too! This recipe easily halves to make an 8x8 pan (as seen in my pictures!).

Variation Ideas (I've tried all of them!):

• Substitute brown sugar for regular in the crumble topping.
• Substitute maple syrup or honey (1/4 cup) for the sugar in the egg mixture. 
• Consider leaving off the crumb topping and serving with fresh fruit and maple syrup.
• Cube 8 oz of cream cheese and mix in with the bread cubes.