Overnight blueberry French toast

Traditionally, my mother spearheads the effort to make breakfast on Christmas morning.  This year, since she's lost some of her zest for the kitchen, I thought I would take over and make breakfast for her.  She loves blueberries, so I thought this gem might just do the trick.  It turned out far better than I could have imagined.  And best of all, it's extremely easy to make.

I made some hash browns as well, but I won't go into their preparation.  After all, if you don't know how to make hash browns, then . . . well, you should probably look into it.

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I started by cutting 4 slices of bread into squares roughly 1" on each side and placing the pieces into a 6"x9" greased casserole dish.  For this particular iteration, I used Italian bread, and it came out great.  In the future, though, I'd like to experiment with other types of bread.  Certainly French bread would taste great, but so would sourdough (probably).  The trick would be to match the right bread with the right fruit, since it's easy to substitute the blueberries for whatever other fruit you like.  (My dad voted for blackberry.  What a surprise.)

Once I finished with the bread, I did the same with one 8-oz package of cream cheese, trying to disperse the cubes more or less evenly throughout the pan.  I also added 1 cup of blueberries to the mix.  My mother is very particular with her blueberries; she has to have really small ones.  I admit the small size actually worked out well with this recipe, but, hey, I'm sure the bigger ones are also good.

This accomplished, I cut up 2 more slices of bread and topped the mixture.  I then wrapped aluminum foil over the top and placed it in the refrigerator overnight.  I hoped that Santa would stay out of the fridge, and it turned out that, if he did get in the fridge, he didn't touch this.

The next morning, I heated the oven to 350 ̊F and removed the dish from the refrigerator, letting it sit out for 30 minutes before placing it in the oven, still wrapped.  After baking for about 20 minutes, I removed the foil and let it bake for an additional 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, I began to make the sauce to top the baked goodness once it leaves the oven.  I started with 1 cup of water, 1 tablespoon cornstarch, and 1 cup of white granulated sugar.  After mixing this together and bringing it to boil for a couple of minutes, I added 1 cup of blueberries and brought the mixture to a boil before lowering the heat to simmer.  The result is the thick beauty you see here.

After removing the casserole dish from the oven, I poured the blueberry sauce on top.  I wish that I had made a little more, since what I did make didn't seem to cover the top enough to my liking.  I was also surprised to see that the cream cheese cubes essentially held their shape; I expected them to melt more than they did.  Still, it's a thing of real beauty that amazingly is enough to feed 6.

Best of all, my mother couldn't stay out of it.  That means it's way good.  It's been two days since I made this great delight, and even today my mother was craving it.  Of course, there was no more.  But given how easy this is to make, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of this recipe.