Baked Apple French Toast - OAMC

This can take a little time but it's really worth it. Great for a meal with family when they "happen" to come over. I've never tried to break it down into smaller pans but I don't see why a 9x9 wouldn't work too. The brown sugar and butter mixed give it a caramel taste, but for more fat/calorie conscious people just put in some brown sugar on the bottom that's really good too. This is not a quickish meal because of the time to prepare (bake it)but it's a no work involved brunch. Alternatively you can bake it, package it and freeze it. That works great too.

• Ready In: 2 hrs
• Serves: 16

Ingredients

• 2 (21 ounce) cans  apple pie filling
• 1  cup brown sugar, packed
• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
• 24  slices  bread (thick slices let it dry some)
• 16  eggs
• 4  cups milk
• 4  teaspoons vanilla
• 2  teaspoons cinnamon

Directions

1. Generously Butter 2 13x9 inch baking pans.
2. Put half of brown sugar in the bottom of each pan.
3. Put 1 can pie filling in bottom of each pan.
4. Cut cream cheese into cubes and arrange evenly over the apples.(higher quality pie filling with lots of apples works best).
5. Cut the slices of bread in half diagonally and layer over the apples to cover the whole dish, slicing and letting dry for an hour or two is really good but not necessary.
6. In a large mixing bowl, beat together eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. I've added the cinnamon to the brown sugar mixture instead at times and it was yummy too.
7. Pour the egg mixture over the bread, making sure not to leave any dry spots.
8. Cover very tightly and freeze, you can also bake it and freeze or partially bake it and freeze.
9. Bake at 375 degrees for 40 until lightly browned, if not freezing. Going from frozen 1 hour and 15 minutes does the trick usually.