Sunny Summer Breakfast for a Gray July morning

Well, I wasn't planning to post again so soon. But the leftover Créme Chantilly with orange Curaçao from my Friday dinner was whispering seductively from the fridge, so I had to figure out how to use it.
That's very French, by the way. Use everything -- the bones from the chicken go into stock (or into your freezer until you collect enough for stock), your stale bread crumbs are mixed up with minced garlic and parsley to top a baked tomato, or a gratin or one of a million other uses (the French eat a lot of bread), and the Créme Chantilly, at least MY Créme Chantilly...gets incorporated into a fancy breakfast.
Over French toast. With homemade strawberry preserves with cognac.
I have an expatriate French friend of a certain age who insists that French toast is not French. Perhaps not in her day. But now it's popular as Pain Perdu ("lost bread" -- presumably, lost in beaten egg and milk) and comes gussied up with luscious, liquer-enhanced berry and fruit sauces. Hélène Darroze, one of France's top female chefs, has a Southwestern French version using prunes and armagnac.
Which brings us to the leftovers. Besides the Créme Chantilly, I had leftover walnut levain bread from the Columbia City Bakery. Lucky me. Leftover chocolate in which I had dipped meringue cookies. And from another meal, leftover, organic blueberries. How lucky can you get?

Hot Chocolate
French Toast with Strawberry Preserves and Créme Chantilly
Fresh Blueberries

Hot Chocolate
1/4 c Guittard or other high-quality chocolate chips, or chunked chocolate
1 c whole milk

Here's a little technique I learned from the pastry chefs at Le Cordon Bleu Paris. To blend a chocolate chunks with milk, heat the milk until very hot but not boiling. Add it to a large bowl holding semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chunks or chips, and let it stand for a few minutes. This lets the milk begin to melt the chocolate. Then, tilt the bowl so you are blending in a bit at time, stirring the chocolate only in tiny circles, very gradually incorporating the milk. Dribble a little more milk in once the first spoonful is fully incorporated. Add another spoonful, incorporate it fully and another. Continue until about half the milk is added, the chocolate has formed a smooth liquid, a bit more liquid than a paste. Then add about half the remaining amount, stirring constantly.
At all times, watch your chocolate intently, with a ferocity just short of what would give you eyestrain, or a migraine, to see exactly what it is doing. If there is any graininess at all that begins to appear, STOP, drain the milk and beat the chocolate to fully incorporate the milk remaining in the bowl until everything is smooth.
Your reward will be Paris tea room quality chocolate. Sip. Sigh. Enjoy. And know that it really is as good as those storied cups of hot chocolate at Angelina's, on the rue de Rivoli.

Pain Perdu (French Toast for the Plebian)

1 egg per person
1 slice of walnut levain, or lesser bread, per person
1 T whole milk per egg
Sprinkle of cinnamon
Grinding of nutmeg
1/2 tsp vanilla per egg
Equal parts unsalted butter and cooking oil, preferably grapeseed oil

1/2 cup fresh blueberries, preferably organic, rinsed and drained

Whisk this all together in a bowl. Dip the walnut levain in it for a minute or so, depending on its freshness. (Mercifully, day old bread is best. Or even two-day old, if your loaf actually lasts that long.)

Put butter and grapeseed oil in frying pan, preferably one made of cast iron. Heat frying pan over medium to medium-high heat, until butter oil mixture is almost ready to smoke. Add slices of dipped bread. Saute one to two minutes on each side, turning when the slices are golden brown.

Remove to a plate. Top with Strawberry Preserves with Cognac, folded into the leftover Créme Chantilly with Curaçao. Scatter freshly rinsed and drained blueberrie around. Enjoy!

Strawberry Preserves with Cognac and Créme Chantilly

1/3 cup Créme Chantilly
2 T Homemade Strawberry Preserves with Cognac, or any really good preserves to which you had added about 1 T cognac per cup of preserves, heated it over moderate heat and cooled it

Put the Créme Chantilly into a small bowl. Add the preserves and fold in very gently, with only two or three strokes. Regard with pleasure the lovely marbled look of the mixture. Put it on your French toast. Eat it.