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I’ve made innumerable variations of this legendary vegan Hong Kong French toast recipe over the years at my Galactic MegaStallion pop-ups, including Malaysian and Indonesian riffs. It’s fast enough for lazy Sundays and is guaranteed to drop the jaws of your brunch guests who think they’ve tried everything.
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Stacked with creamy peanut butter between fluffy slices of white bread, then dunked in a cinnamon-sweet batter and pan-fried until next-level gloriously golden, this over-the-top thick version of FT brings a kind of absurd weekend brunch energy.
The first time my wife and I visited Hong Kong was on our way back from cooking at the World Street Food Congress in the Philippines. Exhausted from cooking for nearly 100 hours in extreme heat, we wandered around Hong Kong Park and fell in love with the tea houses and dim sum. Since then, we’ve made HK our mandatory 1-2 day layover when visiting anywhere else in Asia, even if it takes us super-far out of the way.
Now I’ve veganized this iconic breakfast for ya, so you can proudly serve it next to vegan scrambled eggs, tempeh bacon, and seitan breakfast sausages, for the full food pyramid of awesomeness.
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🥰Why you’ll adore this Hong Kong French toast recipe
✊ Vegan AF: Like all of my vegan breakfast recipes, this skips the eggs and ghosts the dairy and animal cruelty. You’re still getting crispy-on-the-outside, melty-on-the-inside toast stacks that no one will suspect is cholesterol-free!
🥄 Fry-Day Favorite: This recipe's quick fry on all sides delivers a crisp outer crust while keeping the inside custardy-soft. It’s pure texture bliss.
✅ Tested and Approved Worldwide: Like all of my vegan recipes, this French toast has been fine-tuned and devoured by a team of hundreds of recipe testers from all around the world.
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🍞Ingredients for vegan Hong Kong French Toast
White Bread
Use soft sandwich-style white bread, which is close enough to milk bread or shokupan, which is what this dish is traditionally made with. Unlike my vegan French toast casserole, which can handle challah, vegan brioche, or even stale whole wheat bread, this recipe needs soft white bread to get that custardy interior just right. It soaks up the batter like a sponge without falling apart and gives you that signature fluffy texture Hong Kong French toast is all about.
The Peanut Butter
Smooth peanut butter (I use a salted, but unsweetened one) helps the layers stick and brings that salty-sweet contrast to all the syrupy madness. Def. don’t use any of that stuff with palm oil and sugar that turns your toast into a weird candy bar situation.
Vanilla Extract
If you’ve got vanilla powder on hand, feel free to use it in place of regular extract, especially in the optional thickened coconut sauce. I do this stuff all the time when making vegan cinnamon rolls or my vegan chocolate babka to easily make sure all the things are covered in aromatic little specs of vanilla bean.
The Starch
Potato starch, cornstarch, or tapioca starch create a thicker custard and help achieve that crispy outer shell when fried, and they also help in thickening the coconut milk sauce.
Vegan Butter
My fave vegan butter is Earth Balance, but Trader Joe’s has a decent and much cheaper one too. If you want to take things into your own hands, I teach how to make vegan butter from scratch in my vegan dairy crash course.
*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.
🤯Variations
Chocolate Hazelnut Hong Kong Toast
Swap the peanut butter for vegan Nutella. Skip the syrup and go straight for powdered sugar, some roasted hazelnut pieces, cacao nibs, and vegan whipped cream.
Matcha Coconut French Toast
Add 2 teaspoons of matcha powder to your batter and use the coconut condensed milk for topping. This is a total vibe with sliced strawberries and crushed vegan matcha cookie pieces on top.
📖 How to make Hong Kong French toast
Just want the good stuff? Skip down to the recipe card if you’re in a rush. Otherwise, follow along with these steps to get your toast game right:
Step One
Peanuthing is Butter Than This:
Spread half of the peanut butter evenly between 6 slices of bread, stacking them to form a tall 6-layer sandwich with peanut butter between each layer. Repeat with the remaining 6 slices to make a second insanely-tall sandwich.
✅ Obviously, if you don’t want these to be large servings, you can cut down the number of layers in each stack. But I would consider 3 layers to be an absolute minimum for Hong Kong-style French toast.
Step Two
Crust the Process:
Gently press each sandwich together and trim off all crusts to create tall, clean rectangles.
Step Three
Batter Call Saul:
Whisk plant-based milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, starch, and salt in a shallow bowl until smooth.
✅ ARGGGH. Getting powdered cinnamon to incorporate into a liquid is always a bit of a pain. If you are super OCD like me, you can throw these batter ingredients into a blender and run it for 30 seconds to combine them more perfectly.
Step Four
I’m In Love With The Coco:
For the coconut drizzle, whisk coconut milk, starch, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring for 5–7 minutes, until thickened.
Step Five
Judge Dredge:
Heat the oil in a skillet. Dip each sandwich into the batter to coat all sides, then let the excess drip off.
Step Six
F.T. Phone Home:
Fry each sandwich 2–3 minutes per side, including the edges, until all sides are golden and crisp.
Step Seven
Toast Busters:
Transfer sandwiches to a wire rack and let them drain and cool for a couple of minutes.
Step Eight
Well, Hello There:
Serve with vegan butter, maple syrup, optional coconut condensed milk, and a dusting of powdered sugar.
💡Serving Ideas
Round out your Hong Kong French toast feast with some savory balance—fold up a vegan omelette loaded with greens, potatoes, and either seitan bacon or carrot bacon.
For brunch street cred, bust out a golden vegan frittata fresh out of the skillet, or make a side of rice paper bacon, or tofu bacon.
This combo hits every quadrant of the flavor gosh-darned chart: sweet, salty, crispy, and rich.
👉Top tips
- Use Soft, Thick White Bread: Take this recipe as the exception to the rule of using day-old bread for French toast. We want the perfect balance between hyper crispy exterior and cloud-like custard interior, kinda like when making pisang goreng.
- Trim the Crusts: It’s not just about looking tidy; those clean edges make for even frying on all sides and help the sandwich seal up like a pro-level breakfast brick.
- Just a little PB: When stacking your peanut butter-laden slices, you want those layers to bond like besties, not slip around like a game of Jenga halfway through brunch. Don’t get crazy slopping on a ton of peanut butter here, OK?
- Let the Excess Batter Drip: A quick pause over the bowl is all it takes to avoid an oil bath of sad, gloopy toast. We're aiming for crisp and flavorful, not sopping wet sponge.
🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
Yes, for sure! Just make sure to use soft, gluten-free sandwich bread. Handle it pretty carefully because the soaked GF bread can be pretty flimsy.
Come on. Please stop trying to do a diabetic murder already. It’s pretty lightly sweet. If you’ve got a major sweet tooth, you can add another tablespoon of sugar.
You’re looking for a deep, golden brown color and a slightly firm exterior. If the edges start looking crisp and the toast holds its shape when flipped, you’re golden—literally.
❄️ Refrigerating:
Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
🔥Stovetop Reheating:
Warm slices in a very lightly buttered skillet over medium heat for 3–4 minutes per side.
✌️You'll love these vegan breakfast recipes too:
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Hong Kong French Toast
Ingredients
- 12 slices white bread
- ⅔ cup smooth peanut butter
For the French Toast Batter:
- 1 cup unsweetened plant-based milk
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 5 teaspoons potato starch cornstarch, or tapioca starch
- ¼ teaspoon salt
For the Optional Coconut Condensed Milk:
- ½ cup coconut milk
- 1 teaspoon potato starch cornstarch, or tapioca starch
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla powder or vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon salt
To Cook and Serve:
- 2 tablespoons canola oil vegetable oil, or sunflower oil
- 2 tablespoons vegan butter
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- Powdered sugar
Instructions
- Spread half of the peanut butter evenly between 6 slices of bread, stacking them to form a tall 6-layer sandwich with peanut butter between each layer. Repeat with the remaining 6 slices to make a second insanely-tall sandwich.
- Press each sandwich gently to help it hold together, then trim the crusts from all sides to create clean, tall rectangular blocks.
- In a wide, shallow bowl, whisk together the plant-based milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, starch, and salt until smooth and fully combined.
- If preparing the optional coconut condensed milk, combine the coconut milk, starch, sugar, vanilla powder or extract, and salt in a small saucepan. Whisk thoroughly to dissolve the starch. Place the pan over medium heat and cook for 5–7 minutes, whisking continuously, until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and set aside.
- Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. After 2 minutes, when the oil is hot, lower one sandwich into the batter, coating all sides evenly. Let the excess batter drip off before transferring it to the skillet. Repeat with the second sandwich if space allows, without overcrowding.
- Fry each sandwich for 2–3 minutes per side, including the edges, until golden and crisp on all surfaces.
- Transfer to a wire rack to cool and drip dry for a couple of minutes.
- Plate the fresh toast, topping with a pat of vegan butter and drizzling with maple syrup and optional coconut condensed milk. Dust with powdered sugar just before serving. Serve warm.
Notes
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Tee Hansen says
This Hong Kong French toast recipe is absolutely bonkers in the best way possible! Six layers of peanut butter heaven dunked in cinnamon custard and fried to crispy perfection? Yes, please!
The only thing that would make me pause is the calorie count, but honestly, sometimes you gotta live a little! And this one is worth those extra squats!