Quark and Apricot Stuffed French Toast

This is the invention of myself and my brilliant friend Jannette. We are awesome. Stuffed French toast has been popping up around the food blogosphere of late. We wanted to make some, but we wanted to make up a totally new recipe. First we were thinking of chai ricotta filling, then strawberry cream cheese. Then Jannette had a brilliant idea:

Quark.

No, not quark. Quark.

This stuff is great. It's texture is very similar to drained ricotta. It's flavour is sharper--more like yogurt or goat cheese. Here's the crazy part: it has no fat and a ton of protein. We decided to mix the quark with apricot jam. We also added some chai to the egg mixture, but that flavour didn't really shine through. Next time I might add the chai to the quark. I also might use the Tazo chai that comes in the tetra pak because it's flavour is so strong.

We couldn't find an appropriate French toast bread that wasn't pre-sliced. This made stuffing kind of a challenge, so we opted to use pre-sliced cinnamon bread and a panini press. Over all, we were pretty impressed with this dish. I will definitely be stuffing more things with quark.

Quark and Apricot-Stuffed French Toast
Serves 3

Ingredients:

For the toast:
6 eggs
¼ cup brewed chai (tea leaves steeped in milk), chilled
6 slices brioche or cinnamon bread

For the filling:
1 cup quark
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp icing sugar
¼ cup apricot jam

For the syrup:
½ cup apricot jam
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp water

Instructions:
1. Combine filling ingredients and chill for at least 3o minutes and up to over night. Remove filling from fridge when ready to start making French toast.
2. Beat together eggs and chai.
3. Soak slices of bread for about 30 seconds on each side.
4. Place bread on hot griddle and cook first side for about three minutes or until well browned.
5. Flip bread and dollop 1/3 quark mixture in the middle of three slices.
6. Place remaining bread cooked-side-down on top of filling and close panini press. Cook until bread is well browned and filling is heated through.
7. While bread is cooking, bring jam, honey, and water to a gentle boil. Simmer until thickened.
8. Serve Toast drizzled with syrup and dusted with icing sugar.


Pairs nicely with almond rooibos tea.