Ditch The Milk And Dip Your French Toast In Baileys Irish Cream Instead

A rich, creamy classic or brioche French toast plate is delectable for weekend breakfast or brunch, and it's also a dish that's relatively easy to put together. At its core, French toast only requires four simple ingredients: bread, milk, eggs, and butter. Due to its simplicity, it doesn't take much to spice it up, either — a little shake of cinnamon, a capful of vanilla, or even a sprinkling of salt all go a long way. Replacing the milk with something a little more flavorful can also make a huge difference, as much of French toast's delicious taste comes from soaking the bread in various other ingredients. Baileys Irish Cream, a rich and chocolatey liqueur, is a great candidate for using in place of milk, as it'll add a cocoa-forward, slightly boozy flavor to your breakfast.

There's no special recipe to follow to make this substitution; simply use an equal amount of Baileys where you would milk when dipping your French toast, and fry your bread as usual. The results are decadently delicious, especially topped with a drizzle of syrup or a dollop of whipped cream.

Baileys Irish Cream is a liqueur that can be drunk straight or used in cocktails. It's made up of a few key ingredients: Irish whiskey, cream, vanilla, and cocoa. You may see it on menus combined with a cup of joe for an Irish coffee, or mixed into drinks like mudslides alongside other ingredients like Kahlúa. It can be used in cooking as well, typically in sweet recipes such as cupcakes or brownies — or, of course, French toast.

Bailey's works particularly well for French toast due to its dairy content, which also sets it apart from other liqueurs. It's creamy and smooth, and the cream it's made with makes it a perfect stand-in for milk; it'll result in perfectly fluffy and custardy toast. The other ingredients it's made with will soak into the bread as well, imbuing it with a sweet and chocolatey taste tempered by the bite of the whiskey.

While Baileys subs in perfectly for milk in a French toast recipe, it's an alcoholic beverage, and therefore has slightly different properties than a normal cup of milk or cream. Alcohol adds plenty of delicious flavor to a recipe, but it also adds, of course, alcoholic content. That booziness should cook off in the heat of the pan, though, right?

That's not always the case. Food with alcohol in it keeps up to 40% of its alcoholic content even after 15 minutes of cooking. French toast definitely doesn't take that long — so don't count on cooking out all the booze while your bread's sizzling away in the pan. Baileys is about 17% ABV, which is fairly light for a liqueur (which can go up to 30% ABV in some cases); still, think twice before cooking this one for kids, and save it for situations where only adults will be dining.