Monkey Bread

Week 30

This week's host was my good friend and neighbor Jennifer. She choose Monkey Bread. The recipe is on page 88 of our book.

Yummy, cinnamon bread/buns again. Can't go wrong with them. . .

This whole week I though about why they named the recipe "Monkey Bread". Still can't figure out why other then they are scattered everywhere like monkeys. (Don't know if that made sense.) Either way my kids liked the name. This recipe is very similar to the cinnamon buns we made a couple weeks ago. It even uses the same dough recipe, but has a different icing recipe with no cream cheese, which I am sure caught Jen's eye. I really like the idea of scattering the cinnamon balls in a platter. It was easy to eat and clean up. Plus the small balls were kid friendly. I think this would be great to make for a kids party of some sort.

 

The recipe wanted us to use a bundt pan, roll the dough into balls and coat them in butter and cinnamon sugar. Then scatter them evenly in the bundt pan. It was just about as easy as it sounds, other then rolling the balls and coating them was time consuming and very repetitive. It's easier to just roll out a cylinder and cut it or place it in a bread pan. If your short on time I wouldn't recommend doing this. The book indicated that you would get 36 balls out of the dough. I was still curious to know how big they wanted the balls to be. I made mine pretty small because they still had to rise.

 As you can see I started off big and then thought they should be smaller. By making them smaller I ran out of cinnamon sugar. I made half more of the cinnamon sugar recipe.

Even after dumping the rest of the butter on top and most of the extra cinnamon sugar there was a bit still wasted. My question was: will the balls on the bottom still rise? Yes they did. Isn't baking amazing!

Right out of the oven. My other question was: will they pull apart? Yes they did! The bundt pan was great because the side detaches from the bottom so the Monkey Bread came out very easily. I just dumped them in the platter, pulled them apart a little with my fingers, and poured the glaze on top. Ready to eat right out of the oven. DELICIOUS!

The recipe made more then 36 balls but, remember, I might of made mine smaller then suggested. They were really good and I will make them again just like all the other cinnamon breads we've made. In fact I was excited to share them with my parents-in-law. I was taking my Mother-in-Law to the doctor today and forgot them at home. Errr, that made me made but I am not complaining that now we just have to eat their share. 

Thanks Jen for hosting even when your baby is due any day now. :) Click HERE for the recipe.

A Question & A Tip:

1. How many types of cinnamon breads are there? I would like to bake them all!
2. Make the balls smaller then you think because when risen they become a lot bigger.