UPDATED June 2024 :: Today, I’m sharing the best recipe for cinnamon toast you’ll ever try. I tinker with recipes a ton before I sed them out into the world, and this one has been well-loved for years. We share lots of breakfast recipes here – from savory Mexican style breakfast tostadas and spicy eggs to both savory and sweet Southern-style breakfast casseroles, we’re never not aiming to make your mornings as delicious as can be.
Cloaked in nostalgia and guarded by a sense of privileged timelessness, to me cinnamon toast should be mostly left alone. It simply has nothing to prove. To make the very best version of it, one need not lean on any manner of trickery to transform it into something that it isn’t, and that it was never intended to be. To craft the best cinnamon toast of your life, the real trick is to simply make the most of what is already there.
Why we are LOVING this Cinnamon Toast recipe
Perhaps I am simply behind the times when it comes to my attitude toward these new age toasts that have been gracing restaurant menus and social media platforms for the last half-decade. This is very likely the case. But in my own experience, I’ve come to find that it is wholly unnecessary to reinvent the wheel when something so pure and simple and gorgeously plain as toast is involved. Isn’t simplicity kind of the point?
With this easy but elevated cinnamon toast recipe, we’ll lean into each aspect of a classic cinnamon toast and wind up with something truly special. For starters, we’ll use brown sugar instead of regular ole’ granulated. The caramel-like, molasses notes really lend so much to the finished flavor of this truly excellent cinnamon toast. Furthermore, we’ll make an easy cinnamon simple syrup that we’ll splash all over each piece, helping create this caramelized crunchy surface that is downright addictive.
How to Make the Best Cinnamon Toast. Ever.
As a home cook, I constantly seek out tricks and techniques that can help to elevate my cooking – tools to aid me in my pursuit of making the best versions of things, despite my kitchen little. The answers are almost never about spending more money on trendy, show-stealing ingredients, or burying the soul of a classic dish beneath layers of gaudy, trying-too-hard extras. The notion that “more is more” rarely, if ever, holds any ground. Its opposite, however, is a decidedly more interesting mantra to explore.
There may be no better food to underscore this point than the humble-yet-great cinnamon toast, one of my most beloved foods and something I’ve been known to crave on many an odd occasion. Today’s recipe was born from a dream-like middle-of-the-night craving, in fact.
If you like the looks of our Best Cinnamon Toast recipe, you might also want to try:
Healthy Homemade Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Easiest Cinnamon Sugar Popovers
The Ultimate Southern Cinnamon Pecan Coffee Cake
Sweet Cream Cornmeal Pound Cake
Can You Use Brown Sugar for Cinnamon Toast?
YES! It’s the way – the very best way.
To accomplish this more modern take on a simple cinnamon toast, I swapped out the traditional white sugar, opting instead for brown. The deeper, more caramelized notes of brown sugar give this toast an extra layer of flavor that seems like it’s belonged there all along. It just makes sense. A bit of sparkly turbinado sugar gives this cinnamon toast an incredibly satisfying, almost shattering crunch with every bite. What’s more, we’re toasting today not in an actual toaster, but on the stovetop, as it helps preserve the soft interiors of the bread while enabling you to achieve the crust of your dreams
Lastly, and perhaps most notably, this recipe features a brown sugar and cinnamon simple syrup that we’ll drench each slice of toast with, just before coating in the cinnamon-sugar and then griddling up until caramelized and perfect. I made this for my kids as an after-school snack yesterday, in fact, tweaking and honing my recipe, making sure it was ready to hurl out into the world, and they grew immediately, beautifully, W O N D E R F U L L Y quiet. A good sign by all accounts.
What is the best bread for Cinnamon Toast?
The short answer? Whatever you’ve got on hand. Okay, maybe not rye – I don’t think cinnamon + rye = delicious. Same goes for ultra savory breads and loaves … anything garlicky I’d pass on. But you get my point – just about any simple, unflavored bread will work.
I often make this toast with basic, mass-produced sandwich bread and it turns out SPECTACULARLY.
That said, the best situation would be to buy a loaf of unsliced bread – white or wheat – and cut thick, doughy slices yourself. This way, you get to decide just how fat your toast is. Which to me is a wonderful thing to get to control.
What ingredients do you need to make the most delicious cinnamon toast?
It’s incredible to me how by simply rethinking the way in which we wield these basic building blocks, we can completely elevate a beloved classic like cinnamon toast. This recipe for how to make cinnamon toast is proof positive of two major truths that go hand in hand: simplicity can be so utterly fruitful, and less is so often more.
This Best Ever Brown Sugar Cinnamon Toast is relatively humble, so far as its ingredient list goes (I did add a little vanilla).
- Bread
- Butter
- Cinnamon
- Sugar (in this case, brown)
- Maybe some salt
The final product is so wonderfully delicious that you may find yourself, if you’re anything like me, in awe over how a mere change of cooking method can transform a classic. It’s like performing a dance we all learned as kids, having memorized it at an early age, but changing up a couple of steps to give it a more mature, grown-up spin. This is our waltz, guys. This is our grown-up cinnamon toast.
And so. Bread. Butter. Cinnamon. Sugar. By simply wielding the classic ingredients of an unadorned cinnamon toast in different, more thoughtful ways, we are able to accomplish something exceptional, something remarkable in its deliciousness.
So here we are, extracting the extraordinary from the ordinary; a home cook’s triumph if there ever was one.
The Best Cinnamon Toast Recipe
A simple syrup of brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla helps boost the flavor of this classic breakfast fare into something truly special. I opted for the more deep, caramel flavor of brown sugar, rather than granulated … and I add a touch of sparkly turbinado sugar to create an extra crunch on top – but that’s optional. My biggest tip to you here, is to ensure that you wipe down the skillet in between batches of toast, as the residual sugars will continue to cook (i.e. burn). So, just be careful to avoid that and you’ll be on your road to the best cinnamon toast experience of your life.
- Yield: Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups brown sugar, divided (light or dark)
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon, divided
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 4 slices of your favorite simple white or wheat bread, however thick you like
- Salted butter for spreading and cooking (I typically use about 4 TBSP, give or take)
- Turbinado sugar for sprinkling (optional – you can use granulated)
Instructions
- In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine ½ cup of the brown sugar with ½ cup of water and 1/2 teaspoon of the cinnamon. Bring to a gentle boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and then turn off the heat. Add the vanilla; stir.
- In a medium bowl or plate, combine the remaining ¾ cup brown sugar, the remaining 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon and the turbinado sugar, stirring to mix evenly. Adjust these ingredients to suit your preferences (I often add more cinnamon because I live for it).
- We’re going to pre-toast our bread now. Add 2 tablespoons of salted butter (give or take) to a large skillet set over medium heat, and allow it to just melt. Add the bread slices to the pan, working in batches as needed, and toast on both sides until light golden brown and well, toasty.
- Transfer the toast to a sheet pan and brush one side of each piece of bread liberally with the sweet cinnamon-vanilla syrup, ensuring that you get the whole surface area nice and soaked. Sprinkle the soaked sides of each slice with the brown sugar-cinnamon mixture, ensuring that you get a generous crust. Sprinkle each slice with a little turbinado sugar, if desired (you could use granulated, but turbinado is best for max crunch)
- Add about 2 more tablespoons of butter to the same pan and reduce the heat to medium-low. Cinnamon-sugar sides facing down, toast the bread slices just until the sugars caramelize and begin to brown nicely; about 20 to 30 seconds (this goes fast). We’re just toasting that one side this time, so once you’ve got it cooked to your liking, transfer the toast slices to a platter or to serving plates. Repeat with any remaining slices, making sure to WIPE DOWN THE SKILLET, in between batches to avoid burning the sugars. Enjoy warm.
Notes
These toast slices will hold pretty well, if you want to wait a little before serving them. I just keep them on a sheet pan and crisp them back up in a warm oven.
