As my business gets going, I find it conflicting to post my recipes. However, without people like Fizzmustard or Wayne, I never would have got where I am, so I decided to pay it forward.
The Inspiration: My girlfriend is a chef who used to regularly make blueberry french toast from day old pie bread from a local bakery. Alas, we moved out of state and no longer have access to this amazing delicious bread. This is my quest to replicate this flavor.
This was an amazing french toast loaded with so many blueberries they would explode if your mouth when you took a bite. Covered with a nice sweet glaze and super sticky.
So lets go over the flavors we need to really create a french toast. Bread (stale is a better, it soaks up the wash), cream, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, sugar, blueberry, and...egg. The egg is very important since it's not just used in the bread, it's used in the wash. French toast has a distinct egg taste. Otherwise, you really just have toast, or a waffle.
With all that said, let's get to the recipe.
- Waffle (CAP) - 4%
- Cinnamon Danish Swirl (CAP) - 2%
- Blueberry Wild (TFA) - 2.5%
- Bilberry (FA) - 1%
- Vanilla Swirl (TFA) - 1%
- Biscuit (INW) - 0.5%
- Joy (FA) - 0.5%
- French Toast (CAP) - 0.5%
- Acetyl Pyrazine - 0.25%
The Base: This was by far the most frustrating part of this quest. French toast has two layers. A crispy, fried outer crust and a squishy,cakey inside.
Waffle provides the perfect dense fried bread flavor for the crust. Cinnamon Danish Swirl and biscuit helps to sweeten and lighten up the mouth feel. AP gives a nice yeasty/nutty flavor and Joy gives us a nice pastry flavor. These two flavorings are used to bring together the overall bread flavor.
The Wash: The outer coating of the french toast. A mix of vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cream, sugar, and egg. It should be obvious where I am getting all these flavors from, with the exception of egg. We are getting this from French Toast (CAP).
When I first started searching for a nice french toast, I saw people using French Toast (CAP) between 2-8%. BLEGH! Anything above 1% starts to give a weird off-flavor. This off-flavor is fried egg. It also lends just the perfect amount of nutmeg and a nice fried flavor. Anything above 0.5% also gunks coils faster than any other flavoring I have used.
Topping: You can obviously change the fruit to whatever you prefer. I went with blueberry since this was what brought back the nostalgia for me. I went very heavy on the fruit due to how densely filled with fruit the pie bread was. If you want a more normal french toast flavor, just lighten it up, or sub for a maple syrup flavor.
Closing Thoughts: Give this at least a week for the bread flavors to fully develop. It also gives the fruit flavors a chance to calm down and blend with everything else. Hope you guys like it. I am fairly proud of this recipe.
PS: Vanilla Swirl worked really well in lieu of vanilla extract when I was making real french toast this morning
I always really hate it when people do what I'm about to do, but here I go anyway. I just wanted to let you know, I got most of the way through making this and realized I didn't have French toast, but had CAP Waffle instead. I'm not a huge fan of TFA waffle, so I made it with a little extra CAP Waffle and less TFA, and used FW Blueberry since I find it gives a little bit of a truer blueberry flavor. At any rate, even with those subs, this is fantastic after a shake and vape test. When I pick up more flavors next, I will give the real version a spin too, but just to say, this is great the way I made (ruined?) it. Great notes!
I'm pretty happy with TFA Waffle, but now I am going to have to grab CAP Waffle and try it out. There is always room for improvement.
Thanks for the heads up!
My issue with TFA Waffle is the mass amount of alcohol in it. Without a little heat steep I've never been able to remove it. Even just leaving the bottle open and swirling/shaking for a good 3 days, longer than I would normally do, did nothing.
Do you not run into this issue? Even at 3-4% it just makes whatever I put it in taste like I'm vaping straight alcohol with a little bit of the flavor.
Cap Waffle doesn't have this problem.
Thanks! Looking forward to trying this one out. Everything I've made thus far that is fruity has been strawberry, but this will make me buy some blueberry and bilberry flavors to experiment with. I don't think I've ever had a juice that was blueberry flavored, but it sounds amazing.
Im missing the CAP French toast and the Bilberry, but I'm going to try like .5-1% of CAP Vanilla Custard for the egg I guess ( not sure what else to try for it really ) and then also add like .5% INW Raspberry ( because I love this flavor ).
Thanks for the detailed recipe and inspiration.
Vanilla custard is more like a raw egg taste, whereas CAP French Toast is distinctly fried. Along with all the spice and 'crust' taste the CAP French Toast comes along with it.
With that said, it could work. I just think you'll get more of a lighter, less spiced french toast. Perhaps a bit more on the pastry side of things.
Gotcha, yeah I don't really have anything to fill that spot yet unfortunately. I could probably piece together the spice and the crusty taste, but I just don't really have a flavor for that. Another one for the list...
EDIT: mixed one that way, it is still very good shake and vape, going to make a few more very minor adjustments and add this one to the rotation. Thank you very much sir.
Does tfa waffle have a maple flavor? I got tfa belgian waffle a while back and it's very mapley. Also has a play-doh aspect, which I suspect plays as "bread" on some people's tastebuds. I haven't found a good use for it yet. My question is, if you've tried both, do you think belgian could sub for plain waffle here?
Thanks for sharing your recipe~!
Could sub something for Waffle (Cap)?
I have everything else but no waffle :(
That's going to be tough to substitute. I tried things like cake batter and muffin, but they always turned out too pastry-esque. Increasing the French toast flavor will increase the fried bread flavor, but then you start to get off-flavors.
TFA waffle is probably the only substitute, and the original way I wrote this recipe up, but it has strong off flavors as well.