This french toast is my message to you to be a little more gentle with yourself. There’s nothing quite like a hot breakfast, and this gingerbread french toast with roasted apricots is a wonderful example of the type. The spicing in the french toast batter is subtle, but warming, and makes the house smell particularly inviting. Even the most unyielding of apricots growth juicily luscious in the heat of the oven, and slicing into a tender apricot halve, flooding my plate with sweet fruit syrup was just the effect I was looking for. A lollop of luscious creamy yoghurt on top is enough to make this relatively modest breakfast seem like a mega indulgence. It’s cool to be kind to yourself, and occasionally getting up and treating yo’ self to a yummy hot breakfast that’s also not completely nutritionally devastating is a cool thing to do. This is a new concept for me, eating foods for health! I know that the rest of the food blogger universe is now collectively screaming into it’s monitors like WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN SUGAR HIT, trust me, I know. So let me clarify; obviously I am aware that some foods are good for me to eat, and some foods are not so good for me to eat. OK? I am solid on that. What I’m saying is that the idea of cooking and eating food that is not only good for your body nutritionally, but also good for your peace of mind, you dig? Food that makes you feel really good, and not just in a “I poured a melted mars bar onto a brownie and ate it with ice cream and now I am delirious” kind of way. I love the idea that food can heal, because it feels so real to me. Just think of all the foods that make you feel bodily good. As my guru Nigella says, she feels that eating avocado is like putting on moisturiser from the inside out. I completely relate – eating roasted apricots feels completely cleansing. Something about their acidity (and the fact that apricot is constantly an ingredient in exfoliants for some reason) makes me feel refreshed, reset and fortified after eating them. Turns out that apricots are a great source of Vitamin A, C, E, potassium, iron and beta-carotene. So there you go! All cards on the table; I am still learning about what all these different vitamins and minerals do for my body. It’s a slow journey. There is a large possibility that I will get side-tracked, but man does it make me feel good even thinking about this stuff. So this is by no means a signal that I am going to be going all crazy health nut on you! Trust me, I have literally not stopped thinking about that melted mars bar since I told you about it a few lines ago. My mind is consumed with how it would even work, how I would get it to cohere as a sauce, whether it would be too sweet, WHAT A SALTED MARS BAR SAUCE WOULD BE LIKE! But in the meantime, I am paying a little more attention to the foods I put in my body. Enjoying them more, and in more ways. It’s great! I strongly suggest you give it a try.

Gingerbread Gypsy Toast & Roasted Apricots

For two servings:

2 thick slices crusty white loaf

1 egg

1/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 tbsp butter

4 apricots

1/2 cup brown sugar Firstly, place the halved apricots into a small baking tray, and sprinkle 2 tsps of the brown sugar over the top of the fruit, and then add a few tablespoons of water into the bottom of the tray. Slide the apricots into a hot oven, around 200C, and roast for anything from 10 to 30 minutes. It really depends on how ripe your fruit is. For the french toast, mix the egg, milk and spices in a bowl and place the two slices in the bowl to soak. Place a frying pan on the heat, and add half of the butter to the pan to melt. Flip the bread and soak the other side while the pan heats, it should absorb all of the egg mix. Once the butter is frothing place the soaked toast in the pan, and cook over a low heat for around 2 or 3 minutes a side. Sprinkle the hot toast with the extra brown sugar on all sides as soon as it comes out of the pan, before placing onto your serving plates, and spooning over the roasted apricots and some of their juices. A dollop of yoghurt on top is where it’s at.