Nature's Pride- Spiced Hot Chocolate Baked French Toast

I decided I wanted to enter the Nature's Pride contest, but geez is it hard to come up with an original recipe. Since I love french toast and I equally love hot chocolate I came up with this- Spiced Hot Chocolate Baked French Toast. I added a little cayenne to kick the flavor up a notch. It is delicious. Crispy on top, soft and warm inside. YUM!
I should mention (for the sake of full disclosure) I will be receiving a coupon to try this bread for free, but it hasn't come in the mail yet, so I bought some when I was at the store last week.

Here is my recipe:
You will need 6 slices of Nature's Pride Bread. I quartered it but you could cut it however you like.
2 Cups of milk, I used 1%
2 cinnamon sticks, I broke mine in half
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 T cocoa powder
3 T granulated sugar
pinch of cayenne pepper
unsalted butter (optional)
Dark Chocolate shavings (optional)
Powdered sugar and maple syrup for serving (it would also be delicious with whipped cream)

Preheat oven to 300 deg. to dry out the bread. Place the bread on a cookie sheet and bake until golden and crispy. This will prevent the bread from becoming soggy. Once the bread is done baking, arrange in a greased pan. My pan was an 8 x 8 pan.

While the bread is baking, heat the milk over medium heat with the cinnamon sticks and vanilla, once the milk is at a simmer add the cocoa powder, sugar, and cayenne pepper. Stir until cocoa powder and sugar are dissolved. Make sure milk never comes to a boil. Remove from heat. I had to strain the milk mixture to remove the shards of cinnamon sticks, but it you don't break your sticks this step isn't necessary.

Let the milk cool to room temperature, remove cinnamon sticks and combine with eggs. Mix well. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, cover and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, place the covered dish (I used aluminum foil to cover the pan since it doesn't have a lid) in a cool oven and then turn the oven on to 350 deg. Bake for approximately 30 minutes until the custard is almost set. Remove the cover (at this point you can scattered a few tsp of butter) and allow to bake until the top is crispy and the custard is set, approximately 15 minutes.

Once baked, serve warm sprinkled with powdered sugar, chocolate shavings and maple syrup. Enjoy!