Recipe: Traditional Spanish torrijas

My Spanish mother-in-law's tried-and-true recipe!

Hi, friends! This weekend marks the beginning of Holy Week, and while many of our friends and family at home are dying eggs and making carrot cake, families across Spain will be prepping bread drenched in milk and eggs before fried in extra virgin olive oil. Torrijas—similar to what Americans would call French toast—are perhaps the most ubiquitous Holy Week sweet. The key to knocking this recipe out of the park is letting your bread soak up enough of the lemon- and cinnamon- infused milk before frying it in a fairly large amount of oil. The result is a custard-filled piece of heaven that honestly hits the spot for breakfast, snack, or dessert.

The recipe below is the way I learned it from my Spanish mother-in-law, but there’s actually a lot of different paths to take you to torrija heaven. Just this week Nicola Lamb did a deep dive into the world of torrijas—a wonderful read if you’d like to experiment even further! -Katie

Traditional Spanish torrijas

Yields: 12 torrijas

Ingredients:

12 pieces thickly-sliced bread (Texas toast style works well, or really anything you can cut thick—brioche, a baguette, etc.)
1 liter whole milk
1 strip lemon peel
1 stick cinnamon
4 eggs
Extra virgin olive oil for frying
1 cup white sugar
A few shakes of ground cinnamon

Instructions:

1. In a small saucepan on medium-low heat, warm 1 liter of milk with lemon peel and a cinnamon stick for about 20 minutes, never bringing it to a full boil. You don't want to burn or cook the milk, just infuse it with the cinnamon and lemon peel.

2. Pour that milk into a rectangular baking dish and let cool to room temperature, or just slightly warm. While it's cooling, set up the rest of the operation. Beat four eggs in another dish, and mix together 1 cup of sugar and a few shakes of cinnamon in a third dish.

3. When your milk has cooled down significantly (warm is OK, hot is not!), heat up a very liberal amount of extra virgin olive oil in a heavy bottomed skillet, about 1/2-inch (1.25 cm) to 1-inch (2.5 cm) of olive oil, on medium-high.

4. One piece at a time, dip bread in milk on all sides so it soaks up as much as possible, but still holds its integrity. Try this once, to get a feel for how much your bread can hold. Hold it up, delicately, and let excess milk drip off. Then dip and coat the piece of bread in the beaten egg, and slowly lower it into the hot oil. Fry on one side until golden brown, and then flip and fry the other side, looking for that same golden hue. About 3 minutes per side.

5. Transfer the fried bread out of the oil (careful to let excess oil drip off and back into the pan), and put the bread in the cinnamon-sugar dish. Using two forks or clean hands, coat that bad boy with sugar on all sides. Shake excess sugar off and set it aside on a plate, where you’ll stack all of your beauties.

6. Repeat the milk, egg, fry, and sugar steps above, until you've finished with the bread. Feel free to enjoy freshly fried (my personal favorite), at room temperature, or refrigerated.*

*Note: The sugar coating will eventually turn into a simple syrup. That's completely normal, and one of the best parts because then you can dip your torrija right in the syrup!