Rabanadas (Portuguese Christmas French Toast)
- Prep
- 15 min
- Total
- 35 min
- servings
- 6
- Calories
- 340 kcal
- Difficulty
- Easy
Rabanadas are slices of day-old bread soaked in milk with cinnamon and lemon, dipped in egg, fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar. They’re the most common dessert on Portuguese Christmas tables, born as a way to use bread that was no longer good to eat. This is the milk version, most common in the center and south.
Recipe
Rabanadas
Traditional Christmas rabanadas: slices of day-old bread soaked in milk flavored with cinnamon and lemon, dipped in egg, fried and rolled in cinnamon sugar.
Ingredients
Rabanadas
For coating
Method
- 1Heat the milk with the cinnamon stick, lemon peel and the 2 tablespoons of sugar, without letting it boil. Turn off the heat and let it cool until warm. Remove the cinnamon and peel.
- 2Cut the bread into slices about 2 cm thick.
- 3Beat the eggs in a deep plate. Mix the sugar with the ground cinnamon on a wide plate.
- 4Heat the oil in a deep pan to 170 °C (350 °F). Without a thermometer, test with a small piece of bread, which should rise at once with bubbles around it.
- 5Dip each slice in the warm milk, a few seconds on each side, without letting it get soggy. Let the excess drip off and dip it in the beaten egg.
- 6Fry 2 to 3 slices at a time for 2 to 3 minutes per side, until golden. Drain on paper towels.
- 7While still hot, roll the rabanadas in the cinnamon sugar until well coated.
Milk, wine or syrup?
In the north, rabanadas de vinho are soaked in red wine or port heated with sugar, honey and cinnamon, and come out dark and rich. For the same bread, replace the milk with 500 ml of red wine (or half red wine, half port), 150 g of sugar, 2 tablespoons of honey, a cinnamon stick and the peel of an orange, boiled for 5 minutes and cooled to warm. Other families pour a sugar, or honey and port, syrup over the fried slices instead of coating them.
Common mistakes
Too long in the milk and the bread breaks and soaks up oil: a few seconds per side is enough. Cool oil makes greasy rabanadas: keep it at 170 °C (350 °F) and fry a few at a time. And coat them in sugar as soon as they come out of the oil, or it won’t stick.
They keep well for a day or two, so many families fry them on December 23 or the morning of the 24th. Keep them covered with a cloth, out of the fridge, and dust with more cinnamon sugar before serving.
