Torrijas
Slices of bread soaked in sweetened, spiced milk, coated in egg, fried until golden and rolled in cinnamon sugar, a Spanish Easter treat.
Photograph credit: Fuente torrijas by Tamorlan · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Where This Goes Wrong
Use bread that is at least two days old.
Handle the soaked slices gently.
Drizzle with honey or serve with sweet wine.
Cooking Torrijas
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Warm the milk with the cinnamon stick, lemon peel and 3 tbsp sugar until the sugar dissolves. Cool slightly.
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Lay the bread in a shallow dish and pour over the milk. Soak for 5 to 10 minutes, turning once.
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Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over a medium heat. Dip each slice in the beaten egg and fry for 2 minutes on each side until deep golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
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Mix the 4 tbsp sugar and the cinnamon on a plate and roll the warm torrijas in the mixture. Serve warm.
Why the Method Works
Stale bread is the main ingredient. The bread has to be dry, dense and at least two days old, cut thick, because fresh bread falls apart in the milk. Torrijas are the Spanish take on French toast, eaten during Holy Week, and the milk used to soak them is infused with cinnamon, lemon peel and sugar. It is the soaking that makes them so soft.
Warm the milk with the cinnamon stick, a strip of lemon peel and the sugar until the sugar dissolves, then let it cool slightly. The bread slices, about 2.5 cm thick, go into a shallow dish and the milk is poured over them. Soak for 5 to 10 minutes, turning once, until the slice is saturated but still holds together. Lift them out with a spatula, not your fingers. They are fragile.
Dip each slice in beaten egg, shake off the excess, and cook in 1 cm of hot olive or sunflower oil for 2 minutes on each side, until deep golden. Drain on kitchen paper.
Roll the hot slices in a mix of caster sugar and cinnamon. Serve warm, on their own or with a drizzle of honey or a glass of sweet wine.
After You've Cooked It
Best eaten the day they are made.
What to Serve Alongside
- Honey
- Sweet wine
- Coffee
- Fresh fruit
Torrijas Nutrition Facts
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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