By Amy Gorin, MS, RDN
Want healthy French toast? Look no further than this ricotta French toast with mandarin oranges. The orange French toast is so delicious!
This ricotta French toast recipe combines sweet mandarin oranges with creamy ricotta cheese for a delicious, protein-rich breakfast.
How to Make Healthy French Toast!
One of my favorite weekend morning activities is making healthy French toast, like my Pomegranate Pecan French Toast, my Baked Butternut Squash French Toast, and my Protein French Toast.
It's a fun way to add some eggs to my morning, and I love topping my French toast with fruit for some sweetness, instead of syrup or butter. I thought I'd try something new: mandarin orange French toast. I hope you love this mandarin orange recipe as much as I do!
After I created a batter of eggs, low-fat milk, and vanilla extract, I pan-heated mandarin orange slices to bring out their sweetness. I lightly browned the pieces of bread before topping them.
Part-skim ricotta is one of my favorite cheeses, and I like how it adds some creaminess and moisture to the ricotta French toast without a ton of added sugar like maple syrup or powdered sugar, or fat like butter. I decided to top my healthy French toast recipe with both the mandarin orange segments and a ricotta mixture.
The delicious breakfast is also topped with orange zest. You'll find that this is on the bitter-sweet side, like lemon zest, so use just a little.
Say Hello to a Nutritious Breakfast!
In this ricotta French toast, you don't just get taste. You get lots of nutrition, too!
The mandarin oranges are an excellent source of immunity-helping vitamin C, and they also offer a little bit of filling fiber. FYI that I used Halos oranges in this recipe. You could add a drizzle of orange juice to the batter for an even strong flavor, if you'd like.
The ricotta adds protein to the French toast—so much so that when combined with the protein from the eggs and milk in the batter and the whole-grain bread, each serving of French toast offers 25 grams of protein, or half the daily value!
Note that there's only 1/4 cup of low-fat milk in the whole recipe, so most of the protein comes from the other ingredients. I prefer using whole-grain or whole-wheat bread in my French toast recipes.
You get a lot more protein and fiber from these breads, versus white bread. Enjoy your golden brown slices of French toast!
More Healthy Orange Recipes
If you love the taste of oranges, give these other delicious recipes a try:
Helpful Kitchen Tools
This blog post was updated in December 2020.
What are your thoughts on this topic? What are your favorite ways to eat mandarin oranges?
Comment below, or tag @amydgorin on Instagram and Pinterest and @amygorin on Twitter and Facebook.
Halos Mandarin Orange French Toast
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- ¼ cup low-fat milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, divided
- 4 slices whole-grain bread
- 2 seedless mandarin oranges, peeled and zested
- 2/3 cup part-skim ricotta
Instructions
- Whisk eggs in a small bowl. Combine with milk and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract.
- Dip bread into egg mixture, turning to coat sides evenly.
- Spray a large non-stick pan or griddle with spray oil, and heat bread slices over medium heat until browned on both sides.
- Meanwhile, spray a small pan with spray oil; heat orange segments over medium heat, about 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently at the end, until segments are slightly browned.
- In a small bowl, combine ricotta with remaining vanilla extract.
- Top toast with ricotta mixture, orange segments, and a sprinkling or orange zest.
Notes:
Calories
390Fat (grams)
14Sat. Fat (grams)
6Carbs (grams)
41Fiber (grams)
6Sugar (grams)
15Protein (grams)
25Sodium (milligrams)
370Cholesterol (grams)
0
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