Overnight Blueberry French Toast

Ok, this recipe just showed up on an allrecipes.com  email feed maybe two days before Easter. W LOVES blueberries. I repeat, loves them. He keeps the huge Costco frozen bag of them in the freezer--strawberries, too. There isn't much freezer room for anything else except his frozen fruit for his health smoothies. Came in handy, as this recipe calls for fresh blueberries, but I just thawed out around two cups of frozen berries, and they worked just fine.

Homemade Blueberry syrup 

Ingredients:
12 slices of day old bread cut into 1-inch cubes
2 (8-ounce packages cream cheese, cut into 1-inch cubes (one package may have been good--two was a lot of cream cheese--you be the judge.)
1 cup fresh or thawed frozen blueberries
12 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup maple syrup

AND FOR THE TOPPING:
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup water
1 cup fresh or thawed, frozen blueberries
1 tablespoon butter

Directions:
Lightly grease a 9 by 13 inch baking dish. Arrange half of the bread cubes in the dish, and top with cream cheese cubes. Sprinkle 1 cup blueberries over the cream cheese, and top with remaining bread cubes.

In a large bowl, mix the eggs, milk, vanilla, and syrup, and pour over the bread. Note: If I was to do this again, I'd mix it all up in my blender--syrup was at the bottom of my bowl. It all worked, though. Push the bread cubes down in the egg/milk mixture. Cover, and refrigerate overnight.

Remove bread cube mixture from refrigerator 30 minutes before you want to bake it. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cover (if you uncovered it), and bake 30 minutes. Uncover and bake 25 to 30 more minutes, until center is firm and surface is lightly browned.

In a saucepan while bread cubes are baking, mix the sugar, cornstarch, and water. Bring to a boil. Stirring constantly, cook 3-4 minutes. Mix in remaining 1 cup blueberries. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes until the blueberries burst. Stir in the butter, and pour over the baked French toast. ( We poured it on the individually sliced pieces of baked French toast, as some people wanted maple syrup on their French toast.)  Seriously, it was a wonderfully tasty, amazing breakfast worthy of a special Easter morning before church.