
Breakfast · Pancakes & waffles
Protein French toast
French toast rebuilt the way the fitness kitchens actually do it: whole eggs kept in for the custard to work, egg whites and blended cottage cheese piled on top of them, less bread, and fruit doing the sweetening. Twenty-five grams of protein a serving against the classic's sixteen, for eighty fewer calories, and nothing bought from a supplement shop.
- Time
- 25 min (10 prep + 15 cook)
- Servings
- 4
- Per serving
- 363 kcal
- Protein
- 25 g
Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.
Ingredients
- 6 thick slices whole wheat bread, day-old240 g
Custard
- 2 eggs egg100 g
- 1 1/4 cups liquid egg white300 g
- 3/4 cup cottage cheese (2%)200 g
- 1/2 cup 2% milk100 g
- 1 tsp vanilla extract5 g
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon3 g
- a pinch salt1 g
- 1 tbsp butter, for the pan15 g
To serve
- 12 berries strawberries, sliced250 g
- 2/3 cup blueberries100 g
- 1 tbsp maple syrup20 g
Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.
Steps
- Blend the eggs, egg whites, cottage cheese, milk, vanilla, cinnamon and salt until completely smooth — 15 to 20 seconds. Blend, don't whisk: cottage cheese stirred in leaves curds you will find in the finished slice.
- The batter should pour like a melted milkshake. If it is thicker than that it will sit on the surface and cook into a skin instead of soaking in; loosen it with a splash of milk.
- Dip each slice briefly — 10 to 20 seconds a side. Whole wheat drinks far faster than white brioche, and the long soak a classic recipe asks for will turn it to mush.
- Fry in the butter over medium heat, 3 minutes a side. Lower and slower than the classic: a protein-heavy custard scorches before the middle sets. Serve with the berries and a thin pour of syrup.
Why not egg whites only?
Because it eats badly. Whites are nearly all water and the yolk you removed was doing the emulsifying and carrying the flavour — take it out and the custard stops clinging, cooks to a springy skin, and tastes plainly of egg. Two yolks in six slices costs a couple of points and saves the dish.
What about sugar-free syrup or sweetener?
We left it out on purpose. Maple flavour comes from sugar caramelising, so sugar-free versions are thin and gummy with no maple in them, and erythritol brings a cooling aftertaste. A tablespoon of the real thing over a plate of fruit is both better food and, at this size, barely visible in the numbers.
And protein powder?
Optional, and easy to overdo. Whey squeezes out water as it heats, so past about a scoop for six slices you get dry and chalky. The cottage cheese here is doing the same job with fewer ways to go wrong.
Alternative
Why this score
moderately fillingNo single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.
Three routes to fullness — one is enough
What pulls it down
Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1451 kcal goes into the pot, 1334 g of ingredients comes out as ~880 g of food → 165 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.
Per
- Calories
- 165
- Protein
- (28%)
- 11 g
- Fat
- (24%)
- 4 g
- Carbohydrates
- (48%)
- 19 g
- of which sugar
- 7 g
- Fiber
- 3 g
- Sodium
- 321 mg
Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.
Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.
More breakfast
Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.
