Eggnog French Toast with Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream, and Fresh Blueberries

Chessa and I are doing a cooking class for some friends down in San Diego in a couple of weeks and we wanted to try some Christmas brunch type items. I thought that eggnog french toast would be fun but then wanted to plate it up as a napolean with vanilla bean pastry cream and berries. We used blueberries and blueberry syrup. With a brunch there are normally several different menu options, so I wanted to keep this dish small. I used a round pastry cutter and kept the toast slices to about 2.5" wide.... I used three toast slices and piped a ring of pastry cream and filled the center with blueberries for each slice. I topped the napolean with more blueberries, blueberry syprup and then dusted with powdered sugar. All of my kids loved this one.

Eggnog French Toast
1 egg
1 cup eggnog
1/4 teaspoon cinnamin
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Beat egg and add eggnog, cinnamin and nutmeg. Place batter in a shallow dish and soak bread for about 10 seconds each side. Cook on a non-stick griddle until golden.

Pastry Cream
1.5 cups half and half
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 vanilla bean
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Flour

Split vanilla bean and scrape seeds into half and half. Bring half and half to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk sugar, eggs, egg yolk and flour in medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in hot half and half. Transfer to saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until mixture thickens and comes to boil, about 5 minutes. Boil 1 minute. Pour into medium bowl. Stir in vanilla. Press plastic onto surface of pastry cream. Cover; chill until cold, about 4 hours. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.)

Fin liked it and thought that we should have french toast like this every day for breakfast