French toast with Nutella and Strawberries...and our Valentines Day!!

Am I too late in posting a Valentines Day based recipe or post ? :-) Its been a busy week, so I've kept on postponing to share with you our V-day this year.
This year we wanted to do a similar candle light dinner like last year, but we had a lot of other engagements with friends (all involving eating a large amount of food...Lol) that both of us weren't in the mood to cook an elaborate dinner and eat it ourselves.

Instead I'm planning to share with you all how our Valentines Day went this year and the yummy breakfast we enjoyed that morning before heading off to work! As it was a working day I din't plan anything much, but the previous day I set up two goodie bags, one for each of my boys :-) ( ya it's all pink and red, couldn't help it) :-)

On Feb14th, at midnight Manish surprised me with a big bunch of Roses, a heart shaped box of melt in your mouth assorted chocolate truffles, a mini Death by Chocolate Mousse cake and a lovely Valentine's day Card.

In turn I surprised him with the little goodie bag that had a funny Valentines Day card, a handwritten letter and a chocolate-peppermint crunch cookie :-) While I was thinking of good gift ideas, I thought, "who write's hand written letter's these days?" It has such a personal touch, sounds so much better than reading a machine written letter and ofcourse improves your handwriting...lol!!
So I wrote him a whole A4 sized sheet, front and back...and he loved it and also laughed a lot when I had mentioned in the letter that, "I hope our little boy gets your intelligence, personality and mannerisms, while he has already gotten my killer looks :-P" ... cheesy eh, anyway he loved the idea and I'm still awaiting a reply handwritten letter...lol!  ;-)

My lil Manav, whom we lovingly always call Appu, got the best goodie bag. He had a little tumbler with Happy Valentines Day written on it, filled with a blue Shark bath toy (that moves its tail fin if you turn a screw), a pair of his first goggles , Yan-yan (a yummy snack that I enjoyed a lot as a child) , it contains about 6-7 unsalted thin pretzel sticks that you dip into a chocolate spread and eat, and a Rainbow lolipop!! He absolutely loved the Shark , whom he calls Meemee (he calls all fish Meemee btw) and was more than happy to pose for us with his new goggles...who's that handsome guy? :-)

Now coming to our awesome Valentines day breakfast...

I'm not much of a morning person, though I can stay as late as possible at nights...anyway on Feb14th, me and my lil Appu woke up at 6:00am, feeling fresh and happy :-) We both played around for sometime in the bed , while Manish snored away in between all the noise and giggles!!

And then we both head off to our favorite place in the house - our Kitchen! I sat him up on his high chair and gave him a small slice of toast with some Nutella on it...This was his very first taste of Nutella and he absolutely loved it and scarfed it down. Meanwhile I went about preparing our special breakfast. Nothing screams Valentines Day than something Red or a Heart shape...agree??
So while looking around for any good heart shaped breakfast ideas on the net, I found this one and loved it, a Nutella and Strawberry stuffed French Toast!

Off I went to buy us some Nutella. I never buy it usually, b'coz we simply can't resist eating it and the whole bottle gets over in like a day or two. For those who are not familiar with it, It is 'THE' most yummiest chocolate hazelnut spread on the planet! Creamy n chocolaty n hazelnutty...there's nothing not to like about it!

I started by cutting out heart shapes, from 6 slices of bread, using my cookie cutter  (don't throw away the bread with the holes yet) , made my french toast egg batter, prepared the french toasts and layered them with creamy Nutella and fresh strawberries in each layer. I skipped the whipped cream (as mentioned in original recipe). It was super duper yummy and a perfect way to start the day!!

Heart shaped French toast with Nutella and Strawberries
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You'll need
For French Toast
Bread slices - 6-12 (I used only 6 whole wheat bread slices)
Eggs - 3 large
Milk - 4-6 tblsp (I used skim milk)
Nutmeg powder - a pinch
Cinnamon powder - a pinch
Sugar - 1 tsp (optional)
Salt - a tiny pinch
Butter or Oil - to grease the frying pan
Heart shaped cookie cutter
For filling
Nutella - 2 tblsp
Fresh Strawberries (sliced) - 8-10

Directions
1. In a bowl or pie dish, beat the eggs well and add the milk, nutmeg , cinnamon powder, sugar(optional) and salt and beat again until fully combined.
2. Cut out heart shapes from the bread slices and keep aside the remaining bread.
3. Place a frying pan on medium heat and spray the pan with oil (or melt some butter) , dip each heart shaped bread slices in the egg batter on both sides until fully soaked and place it on the pan.
4. Fry until golden brown, repeat for all heart shaped slices.
5. Take one french toast and spread the Nutella , place some fresh strawberries on top. Take another slice of french toast, spread some Nutella and place the Nutella side down on the strawberries. Place strawberries on top of this slice and again take a third slice of french toast and spread Nuttela and place the nutella side down. Enjoy it while still warm!

Suggestion: If you do not want any heart shaped cutouts, then make regular french toasts, the egg batter should be sufficient for 6-8 whole slices.

Now I had used only 6 slices of bread for the heart shaped french toast, so I still had excess french toast egg batter left and also the bread with the heart shaped holes from the cutouts...so I did another trick I saw online somewhere.
(If using 12 heart shaped bread slices, you may not have excess egg batter left)

I placed the bread with the hole on the frying pan on low heat and poured about 3-4tblsp of egg batter into the heart shaped hole and very slowly cooked the egg until its not runny and the flipped and toasted it on the other side for a minute. Voila - another Heart shaped french toast with a twist! :-)
(Its a good way to use up the remaining bread slices too...else just freeze them and you could later use them as breadcrumbs)

Hope you all enjoyed our V-day as much as we did :-) It's fun to celebrate a day in the name of Love although several people sort of don't believe in it or just plain forget about it! For us, its sort of becoming like a family tradition now, and hopefully we'll do something every year to celebrate!

-Manju