impressive Japanese dessert. It’s the perfect vessel for ice cream.

Honey toast, as the name suggests, is a simple dessert made with just toast spread with honey. When I was growing up in Korea, I always ordered honey toast at dessert cafes because it was often the cheapest option on the menu. But something about almost-crispy toasted milk bread drizzled with honey, and sometimes a dusting of powdered sugar or cinnamon, has always made me smile.

Leaning into my delicious nostalgic memories, I’ve created this slightly leveled-up honey toast. It starts with three thick slices of milk bread. Many dessert cafes I’ve been to in Asia often make their honey toast with a 5-inch-thick piece. While I love tall, thick toast that gets crusty on the outside, while remaining fluffy on the inside, you can achieve the same effect without freshly baking the bread by stacking multiple bread slices together.

I stack three slices of milk bread, preferably the ones that are made in Japan, to mimic the height. Then I slather each slice of bread with both butter and a honey-cinnamon mixture. One tablespoon of butter for each toast may seem like a lot, but there’s a reason why butter makes everything better — especially toast! Here, the slight saltiness of the honey-cinnamon mix balances the sweetness of the honey.

Once you create the layers, the last thing is to cut them into bite-size square pieces before baking. Cutting the bread allows the honey-cinnamon mixture to steep into each corner of the bread pieces and makes sharing much easier. The key is not to cut all three slices, just the first two, so you still have a foundation. The bottom slice ends up soaking all the excess butter and honey-cinnamon mixture, so it gets extra flavorful at the end.

INGREDIENTS