A professional chef has shared how to make French toast that is perfectly crispy and fluffy without frying it at all

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French toast is the ultimate comfort breakfast dish, yet many people are discouraged from making it because it often turns out soggy and overly greasy when fried. While it might seem straightforward to cook French toast in a frying pan, it often heats too quickly, scorching the exterior while the interior remains undercooked because it doesn’t have enough time to cook through properly.

Alternatively, Kristin Hoffman, a qualified chef known as Baker Bettie, has shared her homemade French toast recipe, which is “perfectly crispy on the outside with a fluffy custard-y inside”. She explained the recipe is straightforward to prepare, provided you bake it in the oven instead.

Kristin said: “The key to perfect pan-baked French toast is a pan heated in the oven.

“You want to get a sheet pan roaring hot in your heating oven while you prep your other ingredients.

“This will cause the bottom side of the bread to sear immediately when you put it on the pan.”

Preparing French toast in the oven ensures every surface of the bread receives equal heat distribution, resulting in a significantly improved texture and reduced greasiness.

Utilising the oven also requires less effort, as you needn’t flip it or continually monitor it as you would with a frying pan.

This represents a more straightforward approach to creating restaurant-quality French toast without considerable fuss, making it ideal for serving multiple people simultaneously when catering for your household.

However, if you’d prefer your French toast to have a seared finish without using a frying pan, you’ll need to either grill the bread or preheat a baking tray, then cook it in the oven.

How to make tastier French toast without a frying pan

Ingredients (for eight servings)

• Eight pieces of bread
• Two eggs
• 120ml of milk
• Half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
• Cooking spray or butter or some oil

Instructions

Begin by positioning the shelf rack in the middle of the oven, then place a baking tray on top of it. Pre-heat the oven to 230°C (210°C for a fan oven) for a minimum of 20 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare your French toast by combining the eggs, milk, and vanilla extract in a bowl and whisking thoroughly.

At this point, you may incorporate cinnamon if desired, or alternatively, you can stick with just the vanilla extract.

Allow the oven to reach the correct temperature fully. Keep your bread slices and egg mixture close to hand. Using an oven glove, carefully remove the baking tray from the oven and apply a generous coating of cooking spray. Alternatively, oil or butter can be used on the baking tray instead.

Submerge each slice of bread in the egg mixture, ensuring both sides are thoroughly coated, before placing them onto the baking tray. Work swiftly so the bread sizzles upon contact with the hot tray.

Once all the bread slices are arranged on the baking tray, return it to the oven. Your French toast should be ready within five to eight minutes.

Upon removing your French toast from the oven, you’ll find it beautifully golden brown with delightfully crisp edges, while remaining wonderfully soft and fluffy on the inside.

Money expert Martin Lewis shares vital tax advice for pensioners struggling with self-assessment forms, including free charity support and how to avoid costly HMRC penalties

Martin Lewis has shared some practical tax advice for pensioners. During an extended edition of his BBC podcast, the money-saving expert examined a variety of tax-related queries.

The programme addressed topics including alterations to income tax impacting state pensioners, alongside how inheritance tax and capital gains tax operate. Mr Lewis was joined by two taxation specialists to help explain the rules, including chartered accountant Rebecca Benneyworth.

An 80-year-old listener called Cathy got in touch with the programme to say she was finding it difficult to fill in her HMRC self-assessment forms. The deadline for submitting your self-assessment tax return for the previous tax year is January 31.

You can face penalties if you don’t submit your tax return on time. The pensioner said she only owed £150 in tax and had tried to get help from a tax adviser, but many charged significant fees.

Mr Lewis reminded listeners that it’s sensible to complete your self-assessment between October and December, well ahead of the January deadline. Ms Benneyworth discussed some of the support available for elderly taxpayers, reports Wales Online.

‘They will come round your house’

She said: “If you are on a low income, there are two tax charities. One I’m thinking of is Tax Help for Older People. They have an army of volunteers – I’ve worked as a volunteer in the past – for elderly people on low incomes.

“They will come round to your house and they will sit with you, and they will sort out your tax.” The tax specialist then referenced another charity the caller could contact for assistance.

Ms Benneyworth said: “The other one is Tax Aid. They are more London-based but you can deal with them on the phone or by email. Again, they help people who’ve got low incomes who have got themselves into a mess with their tax affairs for free.

“Lots of tax professionals make donations to those charities at the end of the year because we all think they do an absolutely fabulous job.” The accountant suggested an additional avenue for understanding HMRC regulations.

Other help available

She said: “I wouldn’t suggest it to everybody but you might get a bit of help on webchat [on the Government website]. HMRC is devoting quite a lot of money and resource to webchat.

“Some of it is the computer says yes or no, but if you are asking questions that they think you need a real life adviser, you may well be able to get put on to an adviser, who might help you.” Offering his view, Mr Lewis said it’s in the Government’s interests to enhance its services.

He said: “This isn’t about a cost [for HMRC]. Ultimately, do it right and you collect more tax revenue, because people are paying the right tax. When you don’t know what to do, it’s not good for society.”

Submit your tax return by January 31 or you could face a penalty, and these costs can mount up. A £100 fine is initially levied for late self-assessment submission, with further charges applied if the outstanding sum stays unpaid beyond a specified timeframe.

Jamie Carragher took aim at several Liverpool players after their 2-0 defeat to Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League, including Hugo Ekitike, Alexander Isak, Florian Wirtz and Ibrahima Konate.

Arne Slot’s side struggled to cope with PSG at the Parc des Princes as goals in each half from Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia sealed a deserved win for the Champions League holders.

Liverpool failed to register a shot on target and had just 26 per cent possession, while Slot admitted after the game that his side were more focused on ‘surviving’ PSG’s onslaught in the second half.

Slot opted to play with a back five against PSG but Carragher believes Virgil van Dijk was hampered by an ‘poor’ performance from Konate.

‘He [Slot] went about it with the back five all wrong and they were actually more open with a back five than they would be with a back four,’ Carragher told CBS Sports.

‘Because they went man-to-man all over the pitch and your three centre-backs had to cover the width of the pitch and for Virgil van Dijk watching him tonight in a middle of a back three… normally when you get to a certain age you feel in the middle of a back three is perfect, everyone’s in position, getting a bit of protection. This was different.

‘Defenders were jumping into midfield, there was no one to mark and Virgil van Dijk at 34 years of age was having to run in there and he was having to run across. He couldn’t do it.

‘People have criticised Van Dijk for his performances this season but I think it’s been harsh. I think he plays every game, the fella next to him has been awful all season and poor again tonight, Konate, makes a mistake every game, so that’s not easy to play alongside, so I still think he’s been one of Liverpool’s better players, Virgil van Dijk.

‘But tonight in that back three I have never seen him [Van Dijk] so uncomfortable in a Liverpool shirt in my life.

‘I think he will be pleading with Arne Slot to never play that system ever again because he found it so tough.

‘But, what I must also say, it’s not just the system of Liverpool and getting it wrong tactically, PSG were absolutely out of this world. The biggest compliment I can give them was it was like watching Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona.’

Carragher was also critical of Liverpool’s three marquee signings – Ekitike, Wirtz and Isak – who cost a combined £320 million last summer and claims that the trio are not working hard enough out of possession.

‘Listen, what I would say about Virgil van Dijk… he’s always been a true leader on the pitch and he is a true leader, for me, off the pitch,’ Carragher said.

‘He gets questioned a little bit when Liverpool don’t do well by supporters, his leadership on the pitch, but that always happens when team’s aren’t winning, you’re always pointing fingers.

‘For me, he’s been a fantastic captain and a fantastic player for Liverpool and he always comes out and speaks and I respect that because not everyone does right now.

‘I said at the start of the season, and nothing’s changed in that, what you’re seeing here at Liverpool, and there are lots of different things that are wrong, but you’re watching three all-time greats, the goalkeeper, Alisson, he’s always had injuries but he’s having more now, he’s not the same goalkeeper, Virgil van Dijk as we know is not quite the same, who is at 34? Mo Salah is the same, who is at 33 as an attacking player?

‘I’m never going to criticise those players, the legends, they’ve done so much for the club and they’ve carried players. That’s not criticising the other players because that’s Thierry [Henry] at Arsenal, you always have four or five great players who carry the rest with them.

‘So what you’re watching here now is Salah and Van Dijk, who were absolutely out of this world last season, carried Liverpool to the title, they’re not the same players and the others are not quite good enough to step up.

‘And then you’ve also got new players coming into the team and I think they’ve got away with quite a bit of criticism actually, the new signings, because we’ve almost said they’re new signings, they’re getting up to speed.

‘Ekitike was really poor tonight, I said before the game, and I include Wirtz and Isak in this, to be a top player for Liverpool as an attacking player, you need to be arrogant on the ball but humble off the ball, they’re not humble off the ball, they don’t do enough off the ball and that’s why it’s easy to play against Liverpool right now.

‘Three legendary players come to the end of their careers, new players come in and not knowing what exactly they need to do to play for Liverpool right now.

‘I include Isak who came on, Ekitike and Florian Wirtz who has got to do a lot more, an awful lot more.

‘The best way you can describe Florian Wirtz right now, he’s got £125 million, is that he’s neat and tidy.’

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The Testaments, now streaming on Disney+, has big shoes to fill. It arrives in a post-MeToo media landscape still shaped by the seismic impact of Margaret Atwood’s previous adaptation, The Handmaid’s Tale. Released in 2017, The Handmaid’s Tale quickly transcended its source material to become a feminist touchstone, inspiring a vivid visual and cultural language of resistance across politics, performance, music and the arts.

In Atwood’s world of Gilead, women are reduced to archetypes within a patriarchal rape culture: complicit, privileged wives; submissive house servants known as “Marthas”; or the Handmaids themselves, stripped to mere breeding stock for the regime.

As life in the US seemed eerily to catch up with Atwood’s vision, the hallmark red dress, white cap and down-turned gaze of the handmaids became iconic. For protesters, it provided a graphic symbol of the fate awaiting women in a world where the president has described himself as the “fertilisation president” “protecting” women whether they “like it or not”.

When Atwood returned to Gilead in 2019 with follow-up book The Testaments, she did so in the shadow of renewed assaults on women’s and LGBTQIA+ rights worldwide. The release of this adaptation of her sequel challenges viewers not only to face that reality, but to think about what popular culture can do in the face of cultural regression.

The Testaments also has to resolve the plot dilemmas established in The Handmaid’s Tale. Many fans had been disappointed that, after following along for six seasons, they did not get to see protagonist June (Elisabeth Moss) reunited with her daughter Hannah. Nor did we see an end to Gilead.

The Testaments returns to these themes while probing why Atwood’s world still grips us amid escalating crises. Can the series offer anything fresh, or has original show-runner Bruce Miller’s vision – mixing extreme violence with striking visuals – already run its course?

The aesthetics of Gilead

The Testaments looks strikingly different from its predecessor, although the two shows share a visual DNA.

Much like our own world, Gilead has become, in some ways, inured to tyranny. For the privileged at least, there is a sort of everyday acceptance recognisable from real-world examples of life under dictatorship.

Like the young audience it courts, Gilead’s young women – including protagonist Hannah, played with tensile calm by One Battle After Another’s Chase Infiniti – have grown up in a world where political violence and control of the reproductive body are explicitly intertwined. We pick up the story some years after the original show, although since girls in Gilead are not allowed calendars they don’t know exactly how long. We are told this in voice-over by Hannah, now renamed Agnes.

Another resonance with our own times is the importance of style as a means of both escape and control.

The costume and set designs of new Gilead resemble a contemporary AI-authored Pinterest board. For all its pretensions to timelessness, this world has fashion. The handmaids’ Puritan-plain red line dresses have been replaced by neat Kennedy-era ensembles in gentler tones of plum, pink and white.

The scarcity we saw in The Handmaid’s Tale has been superseded by a pastel-toned, cottagecore fantasy of colonial mansions and horses’ manes flowing in golden sunlight. Images of containment abound. Characters fill the frame or are seen through frames, gates, tantalisingly half-open windows and a dolls’ house which uncannily mirrors the home of commander Kyle, Agnes’ absent adopted father, in which she is held captive.

For all the old money theatrics, obsession with bodies is never far from the surface. “The Plums” are so called because they are ripe fruit, waiting to be plucked by much older, powerful men – a fate which becomes assured when a girl has her first period. Violence is never far away either. While the girls attend a sort of finishing school run by disappointed ideologue turned resistance figure Aunt Lydia (Anne Dowd, reprising her breakout villain role from The Handmaid’s Tale), the peacefulness of their education is disrupted by constant threats of corporal punishment.

Female friendship and hope

The Gilead of The Testaments is a fun-house mirror version of our own times. People are entertained by watching violence against groups treated as less than human – but instead of TikTok or constant news coverage, it’s public punishments like mutilations and executions.

“God’s justice is beautiful”, the girls are told, as they view a scaffold (a public hanging site) which they are told holds members of a supposed sex trafficking gang, though they are also told the victim was really to blame.

Obsessed with cleanliness, order, and control, this world is nastily prurient. It is fixated on spotting and rooting out impurity. It reminds us what is at stake when the state polices reproductive bodies.

Ultimately, though, it is the power of young women’s friendship and the inherent, ebullient anarchy of teen girls that holds the potential finally to bring down Gilead. This is what makes the show original.

Atwood has said she wrote The Testaments to offer hope. Hope, in 2026, seems like a dangerous thing: it can seem naïve given the demands of the current moment. But as the American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit puts it: “If the word hope doesn’t work for you, try ‘Never fucking surrender.’”

Aided by its talented young cast, The Testaments reworks Gilead into a space where resistance emerges spontaneously in a world structured to make it unthinkable. In this setting, girls’ friendships, their laughter and their power become seeds of rebellion. The result is a timely, absorbing reflection how we might at last burn the dolls’ house to the ground.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

RIVERHEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A Long Island architect who led a secret life as a serial killer pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering seven women and admitted he killed an eighth in a string of long-unsolved crimes known as the Gilgo Beach killings.

Rex Heuermann, 62, entered the pleas in a courtroom packed with reporters, police and victims’ relatives, some of whom wept as he detailed his murders. He will be sentenced in June to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Heuermann’s guilty pleas — to three counts of first-degree murder and four of intentional murder — bring finality to a case that bedeviled investigators, tormented victims’ families and tantalized a true-crime obsessed public for years. Although he wasn’t charged in her death, he also admitted that he killed Karen Vergata in 1996.

“This has been a long journey of hope — hope that one day we would stand here and say her name with justice beside it,” Melissa Cann, the sister of victim Maureen Brainard-Barnes, said at a news conference hours after the hearing as she fought back tears. “Today, that long, painful journey brings us to this moment.”

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Wearing a black suit coat and white button-down shirt, Heuermann appeared matter-of-fact and unemotional as he answered questions from Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney and the judge. He never looked back at the packed courtroom gallery.

The women, many of them sex workers, were killed over a 17-year span.

Prosecutor credits the victims’ families and investigators

“This defendant walked among us play-acting as a normal suburban dad when in reality, all along, he was obsessively targeting innocent women for death,” Tierney said at the post-hearing news conference.

He thanked the victims’ relatives, including some standing alongside him, for helping bring their loved ones’ stories to life. And he praised members of the Gilgo Beach Homicide Investigation Task Force, which cracked the case with the help of clues that included DNA lifted from a discarded pizza crust.

Gloria Allred, an attorney for some of the victims’ families, described several of the women as young mothers who were just trying to earn extra money to support their children.

“Little did they know that the defendant, Rex Heuermann, did not care about their hopes and dreams, or that they had families and friends who loved them,” Allred said at the news conference.

Elizabeth Baczkiel, whose daughter Jessica Taylor was murdered by Heuermann, said: “I am glad that this is over as far as him pleading guilty. It took a big chunk of stress off of me and my family.”

Heuermann lived for decades in Massapequa Park, about a 25-minute drive from where the women’s remains were found. Some of the victims were believed to have disappeared from that community and their cellphones were found to have pinged towers in the area, authorities said.

After the truck discovery, a grand jury authorized more than 300 subpoenas and search warrants, allowing the task force to dig in to Heuermann’s life.

Detectives collected billing records for burner phones he used to arrange meetings with the victims, retested DNA found with the bodies and scoured Heuermann’s internet search history, which showed that he had viewed violent torture pornography and exhibited an intense interest in the Gilgo Beach killings and the renewed investigation. Cellphone data showed Heuermann was in contact with some victims just before they disappeared, investigators said.

To obtain Heuermann’s DNA, a task force surveillance team tailed him in Manhattan, where he worked, and watched as he threw the remnants of his lunch — a box of partially eaten pizza crusts — into a sidewalk garbage can.

Investigators rushed in, grabbed the box, and sent it to the crime lab, which matched DNA from the crust to a male hair found on burlap used to restrain one of the victims. He was arrested in July 2023.

On his computer, investigators said, they found what they described as a “blueprint” for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Walker, Philip Marcelo in New York City and Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, contributed to this report.

Emmerdale’s Adam Thomas has wasted no time in getting settled into Savannah Scrubs

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I’m A Celebrity…South Africa star Adam Thomas has been praised by viewers for his “hilarious” sense of humour.

The All Stars version of the annual Ant and Dec programme kicked off at the beginning of the week. Stars from previous seasons of I’m A Celebrity have headed back into the jungle in order to follow in the footsteps of Myleene Klass and become a ‘legend’.

During Wednesday’s visit to the camp (8th April), former Emmerdale star Adam was joined by soap star Beverley Callard, comedian Seann Walsh, and Gemma Collins, who remained banished to Savannah Scrubs away from the main camp.

Adam wasted no time in delving into Gemma’s private life as he asked her about marrying her long-term partner, Rami Hawash.

The ex-Only Way is Essex star left Adam amused after admitting she plans to have four weddings, including an event in Italy and another in London.

Adam broke out into laughter as he asked Gemma, “So you could have four weddings?!”, with Gemma admitting she didn’t know how she was going to “make it all work”.

Visiting the Bush Telegraph, Adam continued to laugh about his interaction with Gemma and said, “Only Gemma Collins could get married four times to the same guy, and I’m here for it.”

In another conversation, Adam encouraged former Corrie star Beverley to use the toilet as she “struggled to go”, leaving the camp amused.

He also joked that he enjoyed sexual encounters while travelling on an aeroplane as he was a “member of the mile high club”.

I’m A Celebrity…South Africa viewers have wasted no time in sharing their admiration for Adam, with one person writing on X: “Adam is absolutely hilarious #ImACeleb”, while a second penned: “Gemma and Adam are hilarious #imaceleb.”

A third chimed in: “Adam is hilarious man, permanently happy! Comes across as a decent geezer! #ImACeleb.”

“All Adam Thomas does is laugh #ImACeleb”, added one person as another confessed: “Adam absolutely cannot cope with Gemma and it’s hilarious to watch #ImACeleb.”

I’m A Celebrity…South Africa airs at 9pm on ITV and ITVX

The Queen’s off-duty wardrobe is explored for the first time with her tweed suits, worn when relaxing or receiving guests at Balmoral, on display alongside clothes for riding and practical outdoor wear, with Kelly’s thick woollen coat from Elizabeth’s later years featuring alongside items by Burberry and Hardy Amies.

LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A Guatemalan man pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to a felony offense and acknowledged his involvement in an attempt to illegally smuggle migrants to the U.S. when a jampacked tractor-tailer truck crashed in Mexico in 2021, killing more than 50 migrants.

Daniel Zavala Ramos, 42, faces a possible sentence of life in prison following his guilty plea in U.S. District Court in Laredo, Texas, to a single charge of conspiring to bring migrants without documents from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. and placing lives in jeopardy and causing serious injury and deaths, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Sentencing is set for July 7.

Ramos was among six Guatemalans charged over the crash of the semitrailer truck and the first to be convicted. The other five have a final pretrial conference on June 3, according to court records. Ramos’ attorney did not immediately return an email Wednesday evening seeking comment.

At least 160 migrants, many from Guatemala, were packed into the truck that hit the support base for a pedestrian bridge on Dec. 9, 2021, and overturned, authorities said. At least 53 people were killed and more than 100 were injured, officials said, and video footage at the time of the crash showed dead and injured migrants in a jumbled pile inside the truck’s collapsed freight container.

The Justice Department statement said the dead included unaccompanied children.

The crash occurred on a highway leading toward the Chiapas state capital, some 160 miles (260 kilometers) from Mexico’s border with Guatemala and about 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) south of the Mexican border with Texas.

Authorities announced the arrests of Ramos and the five other defendants in Guatemala and Texas in 2024, on the third anniversary of the accident. Ramos was extradited in 2025 from Guatemala to face charges, the DOJ statement said.

Prosecutors said the Guatemalans conspired to smuggle migrants from Guatemala through Mexico to the U.S. for payment. In cases of unaccompanied children being smuggled, the defendants would provide scripts of what to say if they were apprehended, authorities said.

The smugglers would move migrants on foot, inside microbuses, cattle trucks and tractor trailers and use Facebook Messenger to request and deliver identification documents to the migrants to get them into the U.S., according to authorities.

Plaid Cymru launches its manifesto for the Wales Parliament Election 2026 on Thursday, April 9

Plaid Cymru today launches its manifesto for the Senedd Election 2026 on Thursday promising to create a Wales Wealth Fund to ensure the nation profits from its own resources.

Speaking ahead of the launch, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said the manifesto was “rooted in fairness” and “driven by ambition” and offered a “clear sense of direction for the future of the country”.

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He said that the manifesto will outline the immediate key priorities that will define a Plaid Cymru government:

• Cutting long NHS waiting times
• Supporting families with the cost of childcare and tackling child poverty
• Raising standards in education
• Unlocking the full potential of the Welsh economy
• And standing up for Wales to secure a fairer deal from Westminster.

Plaid Cymru also said that it aims to set out longer-term vision for a stronger, more self-confident Wales and build a more prosperous economy where opportunity is shared across the nation.

This includes using public procurement to invest in the future of local businesses, ensuring Wales profits from its own resources through a new Wales Wealth Fund, investing in housing by upgrading and retrofitting our housing stock and protecting renters to make good homes more affordable.

Mr ap Iorwerth said: “Wales is a nation with enormous, untapped potential. What we have lacked is a government with the ambition and the plan to realise it.

“Our manifesto sets out a new direction for Wales – one rooted in fairness but driven by ambition. It is about building a country where public services work, where families are supported, and where everyone has the chance to build a good life.

“We will take action where it is needed most – cutting NHS waiting times, supporting parents with the cost of childcare, raising standards in our schools, and growing a stronger Welsh economy that works for our communities.