Or, y’know, just… Queen of the house.

My friend Rachel does this awesome thing on Mondays – Mouthwatering Monday – where she posts a recipe and a picture that makes you curse your own lack of culinary ability and marvel at the ease with which she flexes her culinary-know-how-muscles and whips up these awesome meals for her family…ALL THE TIME.

Well, I hate cooking. Sometimes, I get into it and get excited about making something new – but, y’all know – I’d rather bake than cook ANY DAY.

This recipe from Cooking Light magazine kind of allowed me to combine the two – technically, it’s cooking but really, it’s baking. Overnight Caramel French Toast was an absolute hit in my house – and the leftovers (which I had for breakfast this morning) were every bit as tasty as the day-of meal.

(I’d post pictures but, lemme tell ya: Caramel is NOT photogenic. Caramel is shiny. And every time the flash hit the caramel, the picture looked like hooey. Which is why I am a baker and not a food photographer, I suppose).

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup light-colored corn syrup*
1/4 cup butter
cooking spray
10 (1-oz) slices French bread
1 1/2 cups 1% Low-fat milk**
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Combine light brown sugar, corn syrup and butter in small saucepan and cook over medium heat five minutes or until mixture is bubbly. Pour mixture evenly into 9 x 13 pan that has been coated with cooking spray.

2. Arrange bread slices in single layer over syrup in dish.

3. Combine milk, flour, vanilla, salt and eggs in a large bowl and beat with a whisk. Pour egg mixture over bread slices.

4. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

5. The next morning… Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

6. Combine granulated sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over bread.

7. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes or until golden.

8. Let five minutes before serving.

They say this should serve 10… That depends – I used more than 10 slices of bread because I had room in my pan, and honestly… maybe I had two pieces versus the recommended one piece serving (c’mon Cooking Light – this is like the yummiest fresh baked goods for breakfast). And if I’d have had bacon, I’d have served some to cut a little salt in with the sweetness.

There you go – ENJOY. Invite me over for breakfast when you make this, alright?

* I ran out of light corn syrup and used a mixture of light and dark – it was fine
**I used skim milk. It was fine.