Sunday Morning Cinnamon Toast
If you find yourself craving a simple treat, or if you find yourself craving an extravagant treat but only have the means for a simple one, try cinnamon toast. It’s an accessible, family delicacy that has been prepared for generations. Having grown up in the American South, I have many memories of waking up before Sunday school to the smell of my mother’s cinnamon toast. We would run out of our beds, through our home which was nestled in the underbelly of my grandmother’s house, and wait eagerly for the toast to come out of the oven (or toaster oven, depending on what kind of a rush we were in). The comfort of the food was never hindered by my family’s financial disarray, and its versatility contributed greatly to my formative years. It provided a consistency that paychecks and finicky friends could not, a safety that I found in neither school nor church. The solid way in which my father would lift the dish — his large, mitted hands lying flat against the baking sheet, the cinnamon newly browned, the butter and sugar golden — always sheltered me from the fact that we had less. It protected me from feeling like I was less.
Ingredients:
- One loaf of white bread (off-brand)
- One stick of butter, room temperature
- Granulated sugar
- Cinnamon
Steps:
- Lift the breadbox off the refrigerator and fish out the loaf of white bread from the last grocery store haul. The amount of bread may vary depending on how far the last paycheck has had to stretch, but you can make this recipe whether there are two pieces of bread left or an entire loaf.
- Lay the bread down on your baking sheet — worn-out, slightly rusted, overused. Let the crusts touch like your hands’ and your mother’s as you walk through the suburban streets of a temporary home.
- Remove the butter from its casing. It is important that you leave the butter in a dish for several days, letting it adjust to the climate of your home. Let it hear your father’s footsteps in the doorway and your and your brother’s bickering. Let it smell the firewood and dog hair. Let it breathe. Spread it across the surface of the bread, liberally at first then progressively more sparsely as you realize you’ve rationed improperly.
- Measure one third of a cup of sugar. Slowly scatter the sugar onto every slice of bread. The grains will stick in the bed of butter laid down for them, balancing the salty spread with the sweetness that slips through the cracks in the kitchen window on a Sunday morning. It rises at seven before the children are awake, and gently washes dishes clean, stacks Bibles on the counter for the day’s lesson and makes breakfast as best it can with what it’s got. There aren’t enough eggs left for french toast, so cinnamon toast steps in.
- Add cinnamon to taste. Alternatively, mix the cinnamon and sugar, unifying them before adding.
- You forgot to preheat the oven. Set it to 350°F and wait impatiently for the heat to rise through the stove eyes. After the timer beeps through the close quarters of your grandmother’s basement, tenderly slide the cool pan into the warm oven.
- Bake for 4–6 minutes. Not so long as to burn the crusts of the bread, but not so short as to leave the butter unmelted and the edges soft, not yet crispy.
- Just as carefully as you put the tray in, pull it out with mismatched oven mitts. Let it rest to cool for a few minutes. Let the smell fill the air, warming the home as it warms the countertop it sits on.
- Before the dish cools completely, serve it on the bottom cabinet plates, all plastic and color and kitsch.
- Enjoy the toast, feeling fully every bit of effort you poured into carrying this family tradition.
