pumpkin spiced angel food french toast with pumpkin butter

Imagine if you will, light as air angel food cake, sliced into fat wedges, dipped in a pumpkin-spiced egg mixture, and cooked on a griddle until golden brown. Then imagine topping those slices, still warm and slightly springy with delicious golden pumpkin butter.

And did I mention that the angel food cake is gluten-free? Did I just blow your mind? I totally thought so. I'd been toying with a couple different recipe ideas to use up leftover slices of angel food cake from the bakery.

Among them: orange angel food french toast with marmalade glaze, pumpkin spiced angel food french toast, and bananas foster bread pudding using the angel food cake as the bread. Obviously the pumpkin version won out. Mainly because I've been eyeballing a jar of pumpkin butter in our cabinet that we'd picked up on a previous trip to Washington state. One of my favorite discoveries while in Washington was the hybrid fruit and antique malls we discovered on the way to wine tasting in the central part of the state.

I've never regretted not driving to my destination as much as I have when visiting these F&A malls. I spotted so many things I wanted to bring home! For example, I doubt they would have let me take these cute little desks on the airplane home.

I live for these kinds of places. Stall after stall is filled with vintage clothes, furniture, and my personal favorite... bakeware. I spent a good hour crying internally over fondling various finds like vintage rolling pins, jadeite salt and pepper shakers, cake stands that I knew I couldn't take with me.

Lucky for Patrick, who was a bit on the hungry (and bored) side, the "malls" also had wonderful fresh fruits, spreads, and other artisan products from (or near) Washington state. We also found a bunch of uniquely named and flavored sodas (which aren't really my thing, but Patrick adores). On this trip, we picked up a jadeite rectangular dish, a set of blue glass ball jars and correspond and hard-to-find porcelain lids, a super cute vintage hat, sweet potato butter, sweet cherry jam with sherry (which we devoured with crackers and salami en route to the wineries), apples, and the beloved pumpkin butter. SCORE.

The resulting angel food french toast worked fabulously with the pumpkin butter but you could mix it up with your favorite jam or syrup: sweet potato, maple syrup, caramel sauce... endless possibilities! Enjoy!