Tessa’s Recipe Rundown
Taste: Sweet, buttery, cinnamon goodness.
Texture: Soft and light dough with gooey caramel all around.
Ease: So easy! Get the kids involved!
Appearance: Gorgeous bundt cake made up of pieces of caramel covered dough, dripping in glaze.
Pros: Takes less time to make than cinnamon rolls and it tastes amazing.
Cons: None.
Would I make this again? Oh yeah!
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Please welcome back Melanie from Garnish & Glaze as she shares this recipe for Bread! Don’t forget to show her lovely some love! -Tessa
I’m not exactly sure why this is called Monkey Bread because it’s not made of monkeys (thank goodness!), there are no bananas in it, monkey’s don’t eat it, and it doesn’t look like a monkey. It’s named this either because you are willing to act like a monkey to steal a bite or one resembles a monkey while picking at it. What I do know is Monkey Bread is mouth-watering good!
This is basically a faster version of cinnamon rolls but you don’t have to stress about making it look perfect. My favorite cinnamon rolls take about 4 hours to make and even though it is so worth the time (most of which is waiting for it to rise), sometimes I just don’t want to be patient. This recipe for Monkey Bread uses quick rise instant dry yeast so it cuts the rising time in half. Yay!
My two year old daughter wanted to help me roll the dough into balls but unfortunately when children try to “help” in the kitchen it ends up making things more difficult. Instead of rolling the dough into a ball she thought it was a better idea to make flat circles or just keep the piece of dough as a blob. It’s all good though. The chunks of dough smoosh together anyways so let your kids join in and make whatever shape they want.
What makes this Monkey bread so divine is the soft dough and the loads of butter and sugar that it’s coated in. When cooked, a gooey caramel mess is created that is simply irresistible. You can stop there but I say load on the sugar and add the delicious creamy glaze! And boom! Cinnamon roll bites! Good luck resisting this tempting treat!
Monkey Bread
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Ingredients
For the dough
- 1 package quick rise active yeast
- 1 1/2 cup milk, warm (120 degrees F)
- 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
- 5 tablespoons butter, melted (no hotter than 120 degrees F)
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
For the sugar coating
- 10 tablespoons butter
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
For the glaze
- 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 1/2 to 2 cups powdered sugar
Instructions
For the dough:
- Mix together warm milk, yeast, and 1 tablespoons sugar in a bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a dough hook (you can also just do this by hand) and let it dissolve for 5 minutes. Mix in the 1/4 cup sugar, butter, egg, and salt. Start adding in the flour while mixing, adding 1 cup at a time until you’ve added 4 cups (scrape sides of bowl as needed). Mix on low for 5 minutes, adding a couple tablespoons of flour at a time if the dough gets too sticky. Place dough in a large greased bowl and turn the dough over so the top is greased. Cover with a towel and let it rise for an hour.
- Grease a bundt pan and set aside.
- Melt the 10 tablespoons butter in a bowl. In another bowl, mix brown sugar, granulated sugar, and cinnamon.
- Pinch or cut off dough into 1 1/2 inch pieces. Roll into balls (use flour as needed), dip in the melted butter, and roll in the sugar mixture. Place the coated balls of dough into the greased pan. Mix any remaining butter and sugar mixture together and pour over the balls. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let rise for 30-45 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden. Let cool for 5 minutes and then remove onto a platter.
For the glaze:
- Heat cream and butter together in the microwave until melted. Beat in vanilla and powdered sugar until desired consistency. Pour over the warm Monkey Bread. Serve.
Congratulations, you literally wrote one of the best posts I’ve seen in forever. If your blog isn’t already taking off, it definitely will if you keep sharing posts like this one.
I know this recipe is traditionally made in a bundt pan, but if I don’t have any and want to use a different pan, say a 9×9 brownie pan, would this change the bake time or temperature much? Is this even a good idea?
If I wanted to make this ahead to bake Christmas morning, could I cover and refrigerate the Bundt pan with prepared balls overnight for the second rise? I’ve made this previously, exactly as the recipe dictates, and it’s absolutely superb. Thank you!
YUM!! I will be making this next week – just wondering what size your bundt pan is?
Is it possible to format the recipes on one page for printing? It lines up so there are 3 lines on the last page which wastes paper. Don’t worry, I will still be making your recipes if you can’t! I have had great luck with the clear easy to follow instructions.. Thanks for sharing, N.
Hi Nancy! That’s unfortunately easier said than done. The printable versions are automatically generated, so unless I were to manually create each (with over 800 published recipes that would be quite the undertaking), there’s not a simple solution I’m aware of. Sorry! Hope you still enjoy the recipe.
Hi,
I know I sound like a know-it-all, but the name comes from the Adansonia digitata tree, which is also called monkey-bread tree. The tree’s fruits are edible, and apparently, monkeys often indulge… the cake with it’s small balls is supposed to look like those fruits, hence the name 🙂
Anyways, the recipe sounds great! The last time I tried making monkey bread I didn’t get it out of the pan in one piece, which really doesn’t matter tastewise, but it wasn’t very presentable. Did your’s really come out so beautifully with only greasing the pan?