Strawberry French toast with basil sugar

I was recently invited by Allinson (the bread and flour company) to take part in a recipe challenge. Harking back to founder Thomas Allinson, who in the nineteenth century encouraged healthy eating by prescribing the consumption of two salads a week, Allinson are encouraging consumers to grow their own herbs by offering them a Kitchen Herb Garden when they send off tokens from the Allinson bread range. The herb garden includes a box for growing the herbs, compost, and three packs of seeds - basil, parsley and chives. The challenge was to come up with a recipe featuring one or more of the herbs along with bread from the Allinson range, and to focus on healthy eating, in the spirit of the company's founder.

Like many pioneering geniuses, a lot of Allinson's ideas were regarded as a bit mad during his time. He outlandishly believed nearly all ailments could be cured by a good diet, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle. Apparently this was regarded as 'rebellious' by his peers. Oh, how times have changed.

I've never had much success with growing my own herbs. I did try, diligently, when I moved into a house in my second year of university and found myself with a window ledge. It was promptly filled with pots of mint, coriander and parsley. They all showed promising progress for a while, and then almost as promptly decided to stop growing altogether and die. From then on I kept mint in my room, and had a bit more success, but it still had a tendency to grow rapidly for a couple of weeks then stop, turning wispy and lacking in foliage to be used for Moroccan tea-making.

I've always been so envious of people who complain that fresh mint grows like a weed in their garden. Oh, to have my own giant supply of this wonderful, fresh, versatile herb. I've tried so many times and failed, and I think I deserve a successful mint plant far more than most people, seeing as it's one of my favourite herbs and I would actually use and treasure it rather than dismiss it as a weed and moan about it.

In spite of these failures, I gave the Allinson box a go. I sprinkled my seeds - which came in cute little sachets bearing quotes from Allinson himself, such as "Pure air is our best friend", "A man is what he eats" and "Brown bread is not a luxury but a necessity" - into the soil, watered, and waited.

Lo and behold, after a week or so, green shoots started to appear.

Despite this promising start, the shoots still remain in this state, several weeks later. The basil has gone a bit mouldy and the chives have wilted, but the parsley is still growing, I think. Perhaps this is due to my assiduous over-watering. I did desperately try not to over-water them, but I'm useless at knowing when to stop. Here's a tip if you're thinking of collecting the Allinson tokens (6 tokens and £2 P&P, or 3 tokens and £5 P&P) and getting your own herb garden: if you think it needs watering, it probably doesn't. Err on the side of dryness, and you'll probably have much more success than me. It's a lovely little box and I love the idea of it growing happily away on the kitchen worktop. If only I'd held back with the water.

Fortunately I wasn't required to use my own home-grown herbs for this competition, or you might be looking at a recipe for 'strawberry French toast with a tiny sprinkling of mouldy basil shoot'.

I had numerous ideas for recipes involving bread and a combination of chives, basil and parsley. Cheese was involved in nearly all of them, as were eggs. However, I wanted to do something a little bit different.

Generally, people think of herbs as an ingredient for savoury cooking. However, the dessert potential of herbs is something I find fascinating, and enjoy experimenting with. I once made a rosemary ice cream which was beautiful with slices of poached quince, and I imagine would have worked well with poached pears too. Bay leaf ice cream was another hit; served alongside a very spice-heavy, fruity crumble, it added an intriguing herbal note that cut through all the other flavours.

Perhaps the most common herb used in desserts now is basil. It has a fairly sweet, citrus flavour which makes it easily adaptable for sweet dishes; you'd probably have a harder time getting chives, sage or parsley to taste good alongside sugar (although I love a challenge in the kitchen...maybe I'll have a go one day). Basil ice cream was a hit with everyone who tried it; they were often expecting to be repulsed, and ended up going back for thirds. It worked beautifully alongside strawberries, whose light, fruity sweetness sits comfortably with the more complex, slightly metallic flavour of basil.

Basil sugar was an experiment for me last summer; I used it to sprinkle over these honey mango tartlets, giving them a fabulous crunch and another dimension of flavour to set against the super-sweet Pakistani mango topping and soft, creamy ricotta filling. When I entertained the concept of doing a sweet dish for this recipe competition, I immediately decided to incorporate the basil sugar. It's different, interesting, and surprisingly delicious, delivering a totally unexpected flavour and texture.

It's the simplest thing to make, too - you just blitz caster sugar and fresh basil together in a blender, until the sugar becomes pungent with heady basil flavour, and the leaves disintegrate to colour the sugar. It ends up looking rather like green snow.

French toast seemed the obvious sweet way of using bread in my recipe. You might argue that French toast isn't exactly healthy, and the emphasis is supposed to be on healthy eating, but I disagree. French toast is actually healthier and more nutritious than toast itself - you're soaking it in milk and egg, which are good sources of protein and nutrients. It's basically the same as having toast, a boiled egg, and a small glass of milk. I used wholemeal bread, too, which ups the health quotient a bit. You add a tiny amount of sugar and pan-fry it in a very small amount of butter, no more than you'd have on your normal toast.

The result is, of course, a delicious crispy, chewy exterior giving way to a fluffy, soft, gooey crumb, subtly flavoured with vanilla and a touch of cinnamon. It's also a great way to salvage stale bread, which makes the best French toast as it soaks up more milk.

The French call it pain perdu, 'lost bread', which I quite like - I have this image of the lost souls of countless loaves wandering bread purgatory until their redeeming kitchen angel decides to save them through a good baptism of milk and egg.

So, then you cover your little lost bread it in sliced strawberries - one of your five a day - and sprinkle over a little of this delightful basil sugar.

The sugar is the star of this recipe. OK, so the delicious squidgy French toast is pretty spectacular, and the sweet strawberries go very well with it, but it's the herbal, citrussy crunch of the basil sugar that turns the whole thing from an ordinary breakfast or brunch to something classy and a bit special. It gives another texture to the plate, adds a pretty green finishing touch, and works harmoniously with the strawberries.

This is probably a breakfast or brunch dish, but if you made the portion a bit smaller it would make a lovely dessert after a light meal, too. You could swap the strawberries for raspberries or even blueberries; basil would work well with them all, I think.

Strawberry French toast with basil sugar (serves 2):

• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• A small bunch of fresh basil
• 4 slices wholemeal bread, preferably a bit stale
• 2 eggs
• 150-200ml milk
• 5 tsp sugar (caster or light brown)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• A pinch of cinnamon
• A knob of butter
• Sliced strawberries, to serve

First, make the basil sugar. Put the 2 tbsp caster sugar in a blender along with the basil, and grind until the sugar turns green and fragrant with the basil - there should only be tiny bits of basil leaf still visible. Set aside.

Cut the crusts off the bread and cut into triangles. Mix the eggs, milk, 5 tsp sugar, vanilla and cinnamon in a shallow dish using a whisk. Put the bread into the dish to soak up the mixture for a minute or so, then flip over and soak the other side. You may need to add a bit more milk, depending on how 'thirsty' the bread seems.

Heat the butter in a non-stick frying pan until foaming. Add the bread slices and cook for a couple of minutes, until they develop a golden crust, then flip over and cook the other side in the same way.

Place the toast on a plate to serve, and scatter over the sliced strawberries and basil sugar. Serve immediately.

Coconut French toast with mango and blueberries

I can't get enough of these honey mangoes. The day they stop appearing in the Indian grocers is going to be a sorrowful occasion. I might hold a small mango funeral and make a mango graveyard with the stones from my last box of mangoes, wearing yellow instead of black and crooning a mournful ode to the king of fruits. Except I won't actually do that, because that would be bordering on creepy and obsessive. Until that tragic day arrives, however, I'm compulsively buying boxes of mangoes and attempting to incorporate them into every meal. I'm getting weird looks from people at the gym and the swimming pool: the mango shop is en route, so I usually arrive at the sports centre with a bottle of water and iPod in one hand, and three large boxes proclaiming themselves 'FRUITY FRESH' in the other which I then stow away secretively in a locker, with a final farewell caress, lest some common pleb get their hands on my glorious edible treasure. It's testament to how beautiful these fruits are that when I open the locker an hour later, it no longer smells of people's sweaty gym gear, but instead is fragrant with the heady perfume of golden mango flesh.

Sometimes when I am eating these mangoes, golden juice dribbling unattractively down my chin and often my forearm, I cannot quite believe that something that tastes so damn good can actually be good for you. I mean, I love fruit of all kinds, but these mangoes are almost sinfully delicious. Delicious in a kind of way that you'd normally only associate with things that clog your arteries. Delicious in a way that makes you want to suck every last drop of juice from the stone in a greedy and rather impolite fashion. Delicious in a way that means you can't help nibbling a few pieces as you slice them up for your boyfriend's breakfast, and consequently he gives you a rather intent look for a couple of seconds as he enters the kitchen before declaring accusingly, "I see evidence!" You look in the mirror, and there it is. An orange moustache. As unambiguous as fingerprints on a murder weapon. Caught in the act of mango ingestion.

After the success of my mango, coconut and cardamom cheesecake, I wanted to recreate something similar in breakfast form. A honey mango is a brilliant breakfast food: it's soft and ripe enough not to be too texturally demanding first thing in the morning, but it's also juicy and tangy enough to wake up your tastebuds, and sweet enough to feel like a real indulgence. Plus that gorgeous marigold colour makes you feel like you're getting sunshine in the morning even if it's grey and drizzly outside (which, this being England, is rather likely). Just chopping up these beautiful fruits makes the morning a little bit better. Especially because of the cook's perk that is the mango stone. The flesh that clings to its contours is impossible to extract with a knife; it has to be extracted by one's teeth, sucked clean like a carcass in a rapturous and greedy fashion. I think that when I cook with these mangoes, only about 60% of each one makes it into the finished dish. The rest ends up in my stomach. It makes sense; it would be a waste to throw the fleshy stone into the bin, with so much deliciousness surrounding it, so I'm actually being eco-friendly rather than gluttonous.

I was going to try the mangoes out in pancakes, but wasn't sure what would happen. I've never cooked a mango, and I can't really see how it would add anything. Like strawberries, I think they're probably best enjoyed as they are. Also, these honey mangoes are so juicy that I'm worried that they'd turn to mush during cooking, like strawberries - anything with a high water content like that doesn't take well to heat. I'm still tempted to try them in a coconut-scented pancake batter, but French toast seemed a safer option. One of my favourite ways of having fruit for breakfast is to place it against a fairly bland canvas of sweet bread or plain pancake batter; that way its colours and flavours get to shine. It also means you rarely need to add any sugar to your breakfast, because the flavour of the fruit is intense enough. I probably eat enough sugar during the day without having to have it for breakfast too (although I make an exception for jam, which is an excellent substance).

I've made vanilla- and almond-flavoured French toast before, to pair with rhubarb or strawberries for the former and apricots for the latter. You get the merest hint of flavour, but the fruit is complemented rather than overpowered. For coupling with mangoes, coconut was the obvious choice, especially as it had worked so well with my cheesecake. I added a little coconut essence to the milk and egg mixture for soaking the bread, and then sprinkled the bread with desiccated coconut before pan-frying. I'd normally sprinkle it with demerara sugar: it caramelises but stays crunchy in the heat, which is what I was hoping to achieve with the coconut. It just adds a nice contrast in texture and an interesting fresh, clean, slightly sweet flavour.

The dense, rich texture of the bread against the juicy mangoes is a delightful combination for breakfast. You're getting all that satisfying starch but it's balanced by the sharpness of crunchy blueberries and the fragrant juice of the golden mangoes. I'm not sure why I put blueberries with the mangoes; I think largely it was an unconscious decision based on how good the colours would look against each other, but most berries would work, or possibly banana or pineapple, or you could just use mango. The blueberries do provide a nice change in texture; these honey mangoes are so ripe that they just melt away in your mouth. You almost need the thick toast to remind you that you're actually eating something. I used wholemeal bread for vaguely health-conscious reasons, but I actually think white would be better with the coconut flavouring.

Yet another dish that I am going to have to mourn when the mangoes run out. Alas.

Coconut French toast with mango and blueberries (serves 2):

• 4 slices from a stale loaf of bread (or slice a fresh loaf and leave the slices out overnight to harden)
• 250ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp coconut essence (or you could use vanilla)
• 6 tbsp desiccated coconut
• Butter, for frying
• 2 honey mangoes, peeled and sliced
• Half a punnet of blueberries

Beat the egg with the milk and coconut essence, then pour into a baking dish. Lay the bread in the mixture for 10 minutes, then turn over and leave for another 10 minutes - you want it to absorb all the liquid. If it still has dry patches and all the liquid has gone, add a bit more milk.

Heat a large knob of butter in a frying pan until foaming. Sprinkle the upward side of the bread with half the desiccated coconut, then place it coconut side down in the butter. Sprinkle the other side with the rest of the coconut while it sizzles in the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes until golden, then flip over and cook for another 5 minutes or so - it should be quite firm. 

Serve the toast piled high with the fruit scattered over, and maybe a bit more desiccated coconut sprinkled on top.

Apricot and almond French toast

If you are a regular reader of this blog (and if you're not, explanations in writing please - there's a comment button at the bottom of this post), you will know that I have a strange and passionate fetish for apricots. Fresh ones, mainly, though I love to use the dried ones in all sorts of dishes, particularly savoury ones. Few things make me happier, culinarily speaking, than when the first of the season's apricots appear at the market. I feel reassured that for the next few months I will never be lacking in ideas for luscious, apricot-related confections. I read an old Telegraph article today - I think it was about berries - that at the bottom was asking people to send in apricot recipes for potential publication. Unfortunately it was dated 2001; I was devastated when I read the date, because I feel I am just the girl they need. It could have been my much-needed big break in the food-writing world. One glimpse of this apricot French toast, and I guarantee they would have hired me to extol the wonders of this gorgeous fruit. Preferably for a substantial salary. Though I could deal with being paid simply in crates of apricots.

It occurred to me, while lying in bed the other day, that perhaps my obsession with apricots is largely the result of subliminal messaging. I sleep with a large art print of a bowl of apricots directly in front of my bed; it is the first thing I see when I wake up, and the last thing my sleepy eyes focus on before they close for eight hours. I never really thought about the connection before. I love apricots for their beautiful colouring - particularly when you find some with a bright red blush blossoming over their usual orange - and for their versatility in the kitchen. I love them because they can appear fairly unassuming when raw, then, given the heat treatment, soften and transform into fragrant, pleasantly tart morsels of sunshine. I love them because they feature in lots of Moroccan and Middle Eastern recipes, my favourite type of cuisine. But maybe none of that is true. Maybe I just love them because they sit there on my wall staring at me all night, sending their little orange vibes into my sleeping brain, begging me to continue my love affair with them and bring ways of cooking them to the world.

So, not one to let the apricots down, here is a simple but fantastically delicious recipe. It's a brunch dish in my mind, but could also be a dessert if you've had a light main course and use a little less bread. Obviously, French toast is not my invention (for starters, I am not French, nor do I eat toast that often). However, this combination arose as yet another way to bring my favourite fruit to the breakfast table, and it's now one of my favourites. It's essentially the same method as my rhubarb and vanilla French toast, but I made a couple of changes. I used wholemeal bread instead of white, mainly for health-conscious reasons but also because I love the more interesting flavour (more interesting, because manufactured white bread tastes mainly of cotton wool with a slight notes of albino and undertones of cloud). I used almond extract instead of vanilla (I can't get enough of this stuff at the moment), and I served it with apricots instead of rhubarb.

Not just any apricots, though. These were cooked in a way I've never tried before, and were definitely the best I've ever made. After my trout-in-a-parcel antics the other day, I decided to try baking the apricots in a foil parcel. I drizzled a little honey over the halved fruit, added a splash of orange flower water, sealed the parcel and put it in the oven. Oh, my goodness. They were amazing. Their colour intensified to this incredible marigold, and they softened into the most flavour-packed apricots I've ever had. My boyfriend, who sampled this, remarked that they tasted like apricot jam. You get all of that concentrated flavour and tartness, but without having to add any sugar or do very much at all. They also keep their shape better than in a compote, so look beautiful too. Unfortunately a lot of the sugary juices bubbled out of the parcel and solidified on the oven floor, but if you plan in advance and place the foil parcel on a tray, you can then drizzle the juices over the French toast when you serve it.

It's hard to convey how good this is. I sprinkled demerara sugar on the bread just before frying it, resulting in this amazing caramelised crust, while the inside of the bread stays gooey from the egg. The almond extract isn't too overpowering, but works so well with the sweet, tart fruit, soft enough to squish onto each mouthful of bread as you eat it. Even better, the bread soaks up all the fragrant juices from the apricots. I'm glad I used wholemeal; it has much more depth of flavour and also a bit more texture, somehow, than white, so is better for standing up to the apricots and almond. I genuinely can't think of a better brunch.

Lord knows why I'm writing this on an empty stomach. I'm such a masochist.

Apricot and almond French toast (serves 2):

• 6 large apricots (you could also use peaches), halved
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp orange flower water
• 4 thick slices wholemeal bread, cut from an unsliced loaf and left out overnight to harden
• 2 eggs
• 200ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• Demerara sugar, for sprinkling
• A knob of butter
• Icing sugar, for dusting

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Place the apricots on a large sheet of foil, and bring the sides up to form a parcel. Drizzle over the honey and flower water, then seal the parcel and place on a baking tray. Cook in the oven for about half an hour, or until the apricots are soft and fragrant. Check them halfway through - you don't want them to collapse into mush - just remember to re-seal the parcel.

When the apricots are nearly done, whisk the eggs, milk and almond extract together in a baking dish. Lay the slices of bread in the mixture for 5-10 minutes, then flip over. You want them to have absorbed most of the milk. Make sure there are no dry patches by pressing it down into the milk.

Heat the butter in a frying pan until foaming. Sprinkle the bread slices with the demerara sugar then place, sugar-side down, in the butter - you may need to do this in batches. It should sizzle. While that side is cooking, sprinkle sugar on the other side. Cook for about 4 minutes before flipping over and cooking the other side. You should have a crunchy, caramelised crust and a soft interior (the toast, I mean - not you yourself).

Remove the apricots from the oven and turn it down to 90C or so. Keep the cooked toast in the oven to keep it warm while you make the second batch. I find this helps to remove any excess moisture as well, so you could always put both batches in there to cook through when you're done.

Sprinkle the French toast with icing sugar and serve with the cooked apricots and a drizzle of their juice. A scattering of toasted almonds would be good too.