We live in a very rural place in Japan. In fact, around our apartment are rice fields and just one supermarket 7 minutes away on foot. There's no convenience stores nearby. Well, there is one but it closes from eleven in the evening until 4 in the morning. It felt like I just said a joke. There are beauty salons here. A bit too many. Imagine: our neighborhood has one bake shop, one supermarket, one flower shop, one sushi shop, no café and five hair salons!
I need coffee shops. That's where I can study most effectively. The presence of other people that I don't need to talk to helps me focus and be motivated in studying Japanese. Here at home, there is very fast access to Facebook and many interesting YouTube videos (not to mention my art room full of junk I've been wanting to recycle), that I find it hard to study.But this is where I live now. A neighborhood with neither dine-in pancakes for breakfast, nor a paper cup of tea for an afternoon of self-studying. It sounds like my café story is a tragic one. But it is not.On weekends when my husband doesn't have work, we sometimes go to cafes in nearby towns. I usually study Japanese while he reads manga or studies English. That's his way of cheering me up.But on weekdays like today, I have to work hard for my pancakes and hot chocolate. And when I work, I work hard. So today, forget the pancakes and I serve myself these Oreo-filled French toasts! Oh, the buttery smell of friendly coffee shops in the comfort of my own kitchen.
Ingredients
1 pc loaf bread (about 12x12x3cm)
2 pcs Oreo cookie
1/2 cup fresh milk
1 piece egg
1 tsp sugar
chocolate syrup (optional)
whipped cream (optional)
1 tbsp cooking oil or butter
Procedure
On a bowl, scramble the egg then mix in the sugar and milk to create the batter.
Cut the loaf into four equally-sized squares; put Oreo in between two quarter loaves; then soak it well in the batter, making sure that it is thoroughly wet inside out. Using the back of the spoon, lightly press the edges of the sandwich to seal the Oreo inside. Repeat this to the remaining ingredients.
On a non-stick pan over medium low heat, put oil or melt butter.
Carefully put the Oreo-loaf sandwiches to fry. Flip it after about 2 minutes.
Increase fire to medium heat then flip the sandwiches once again to give a nice, light crunch to your French toasts. Do this to the other side too.
Once it's cooked, remove it from the pan and cut diagonally once, making two triangles out of one sandwich.
Serve it with chocolate syrup and whipped cream like I did, or just the traditional confectioner's sugar and a small block of butter.
Tips and Tricks I'd recommend mixing in a bit of vanilla essence to the batter to neutralize the smell of egg. Also, when I made this for myself, I used much less egg and more milk and it tasted wonderful.