Granini's Monkey Bread
Much better!!
The first time I made monkey bread, it was a complete disaster. The biscuit dough was too mealy. The dough didn't cook all the way through. I filled the pan way too full. The syrupy goodness dripped down into the au gratin potatoes that were baking on the shelf beneath the monkey bread. The bread was way too salty, and no one liked it. Super duper sad.
So, I took what I learned, and WOW, what a difference!
This time I used my dinner roll recipe for the dough, used half unsalted and half salted butter for the caramel sauce, and mmmmm boy howdy it was delicious!!
So here you go!
Ingredients:
For the dough:
1 package yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup scalded milk
2 Tablespoons butter (salted or unsalted, doesn't matter)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
3 1/4 cups flour
Sprinkles:
1 cup sugar (next time I'm going to use ¼ cup sugar and ¾ cup brown sugar)
2 teaspoons cinnamon (next time I'll add 3 teaspoons)
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
Sauce:
¼ cup maple syrup
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ cup melted butter (unsalted)
½ cup melted butter (salted)
Directions:
- Sprinkle the yeast onto the warm water. Give it a vigorous whisk, and allow to sit for about 5 minutes.
- To scald the milk: place milk in a reactive (a metal pan, rather than a nonstick one) saucepan on medium high. Allow the milk to come to a full simmer. When the milk starts to climb the sides of the pan, pull it off the heat.
- Add butter to the very hot milk. Allow milk to cool for about 10 minutes. I usually put mine in the fridge to cool.
- Add the sugar and salt. Whisk around. Add in the egg and whisk thoroughly.
- Add ½ cup of the flour and stir completely. Slowly pour in the milk, and stir. Mix in the remaining flour.
- Turn on your oven to 400℉.
- Knead the dough for roughly 5 minutes.
- Lightly spray a clean, large bundt cake pan with cooking spray. Make sure to coat all the nooks and crannies.
- No, I did not let my dough proof in an oven. I was, however, busy making breakfast, so it probably sat on the counter for 14 minutes or so.
- Split the dough into small pieces. About 1 to 1 ½ inches square or so. No need to be exact. No need to roll them into balls. Just chop them roughly around that size.
- Mix your cinnamon sugar and nutmeg together in a medium sized bowl.
- Drop each of your small pieces of bread dough into the cinnamon sugar and toss them around, coating all the sides.
- Plunk the cinnamon sugar pieces into your bundt pan, placing them roughly fairly evenly around the inside of your dish.
- After each layer (or just every once in a while), sprinkle an additional handful of cinnamon sugar over the whole section of bread dough, just to give the dough even more of the cinnamon sugar goodness.
- Melt the butters together and stir to make sure the butter is completely melted. Add in the syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar. Stir until it is a thick gooey delicious looking texture.
- Pour the cinnamon sugar syrupy caramel sauce over the top of the cinnamon bread chunks.
- Pop the bundt pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or so, or until the whole top is lovely and medium brown. After 24 minutes, keep an eye on it. This is rather tricky. You don't want the caramel to burn, but you don't want the bread to be under baked. So keep an eye on it.
- When the monkey bread is ready to come out of the oven, you're not going to let it rest in the pan it baked in. You're going to go ahead and pop it right out onto its plate.
- Get a cake plate or a wooden cutting board or a serving dish that is slightly larger than your bundt pan. Using hot pads, very carefully flip your bundt cake upside down (invert it), and lift off the pan. Fingers crossed, and the whole thing will pop out of your pan easily, the underside lovely and caramelized, and your kitchen smelling like heaven.
- Allow the monkey bread to cool slightly so that your fingers and your tongue do not suffer third degree burns when you dip in. If any of the caramel oozes off the sides, feel free to use a rubber spatula to schlop the goodness back onto the top of your bread.
- When the monkey bread comes out correctly, you should be able to dip your fingers inside and pull out lovely chunks of caramelized bread bits. Like bite sized sticky buns. And boy howdy, is it scrumpdillyicious!!
For those of you who like pictures, here you go:
At this point, the bundt pan was barely more than ½ full -- definitely not even 3/4 of the way filled, but I was all out of dough. I honestly thought there wouldn't be enough dough in the pan, and I regretted not making a second batch of dough. But honestly, it was more than plenty!!! The dough rose beautifully in the oven, and baked to perfection.
I thought it looked a wee bit too dark around the edges, but I'd only baked it for about 29 minutes at this point. But it was lovely. I think for me, it might have been better after 28 minutes. I wanted to make sure the insides were baked all the way through.
Look at that lovely monkey bread!!! HEAVEN!
This is what my monkey bread looked like no more than 12 minutes later. We put the cutting board in the middle of the table, and each of us grabbed a fork. We sat on opposite sides of the table and systematically pulled little pieces off, put them onto our dessert plates, and nibbled. WOW. What a treat!
We obviously decimated the entire thing. My daughter claimed that this new treat was like eating the insides of cinnamon rolls -- all the nice and gooey parts, without the hard crusty outer pieces. My husband, in between happy mmms, said he'd like a wee bit more cinnamon. And when I mentioned that I have a recipe for a savory version of monkey bread, my son said he'd like to eat a garlic parmesan version of the bread. So, I'll definitely be making this again!!!
How might I improve the recipe for next time?
Next time I'm going to roll the pieces in brown sugar and cinnamon (rather than regular sugar and cinnamon), like I normally do when I make cinnamon rolls. I will also add more cinnamon. I may also add in some toasted pecans. And perhaps I'll try not using the maple syrup. I like my caramel sauce nice and sticky, and the maple syrup really did the trick. But when I make cinnamon rolls, I don't use maple syrup. I don't really need to, since the brown sugar and the butter melt together in a lovely way to create a caramel sauce. So, I'll give that a whirl and see if I can perfect the recipe. But honestly, this was pretty darned terrific. The whole thing was decimated in about 12 minutes. Clearly, we liked it!
Alrighty then, until next time!
I'm off to go work on Book 2.5, Jack and Claire's love story.
Who are Jack and Claire? Jack Diamond is a Detective for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, who stars as the protagonist in the Jack Diamond Murder Mystery series. Claire is a pediatric cosmetic surgeon who repairs birth defects and specializes in reconstruction after traumatic injuries. They fell in love in college. After years of separation due to work, marriage, murder and life, they finally find their way back to each other.
You can read all about them in Diamonds for Diamond and No One Noticed. They'll also both appear in Book 3 -- a yet to be named book about a massive casualty shooting on a pedestrian bridge in Portland, Oregon.
Click on the links below and get started. Amazon will ship them to you, or you can download and read the e-book versions now!
What are you waiting for? Go get the books now!
* * * * *
The first time I made monkey bread, it was a complete disaster. The biscuit dough was too mealy. The dough didn't cook all the way through. I filled the pan way too full. The syrupy goodness dripped down into the au gratin potatoes that were baking on the shelf beneath the monkey bread. The bread was way too salty, and no one liked it. Super duper sad.
So, I took what I learned, and WOW, what a difference!
This time I used my dinner roll recipe for the dough, used half unsalted and half salted butter for the caramel sauce, and mmmmm boy howdy it was delicious!!
So here you go!
Ingredients:
For the dough:
1 package yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup scalded milk
2 Tablespoons butter (salted or unsalted, doesn't matter)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
3 1/4 cups flour
Sprinkles:
1 cup sugar (next time I'm going to use ¼ cup sugar and ¾ cup brown sugar)
2 teaspoons cinnamon (next time I'll add 3 teaspoons)
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
Sauce:
¼ cup maple syrup
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ cup melted butter (unsalted)
½ cup melted butter (salted)
Directions:
- Sprinkle the yeast onto the warm water. Give it a vigorous whisk, and allow to sit for about 5 minutes.
- To scald the milk: place milk in a reactive (a metal pan, rather than a nonstick one) saucepan on medium high. Allow the milk to come to a full simmer. When the milk starts to climb the sides of the pan, pull it off the heat.
- Add butter to the very hot milk. Allow milk to cool for about 10 minutes. I usually put mine in the fridge to cool.
- Add the sugar and salt. Whisk around. Add in the egg and whisk thoroughly.
- Add ½ cup of the flour and stir completely. Slowly pour in the milk, and stir. Mix in the remaining flour.
- Turn on your oven to 400℉.
- Knead the dough for roughly 5 minutes.
- Lightly spray a clean, large bundt cake pan with cooking spray. Make sure to coat all the nooks and crannies.
- No, I did not let my dough proof in an oven. I was, however, busy making breakfast, so it probably sat on the counter for 14 minutes or so.
- Split the dough into small pieces. About 1 to 1 ½ inches square or so. No need to be exact. No need to roll them into balls. Just chop them roughly around that size.
- Mix your cinnamon sugar and nutmeg together in a medium sized bowl.
- Drop each of your small pieces of bread dough into the cinnamon sugar and toss them around, coating all the sides.
- Plunk the cinnamon sugar pieces into your bundt pan, placing them roughly fairly evenly around the inside of your dish.
- After each layer (or just every once in a while), sprinkle an additional handful of cinnamon sugar over the whole section of bread dough, just to give the dough even more of the cinnamon sugar goodness.
- Melt the butters together and stir to make sure the butter is completely melted. Add in the syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar. Stir until it is a thick gooey delicious looking texture.
- Pour the cinnamon sugar syrupy caramel sauce over the top of the cinnamon bread chunks.
- Pop the bundt pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or so, or until the whole top is lovely and medium brown. After 24 minutes, keep an eye on it. This is rather tricky. You don't want the caramel to burn, but you don't want the bread to be under baked. So keep an eye on it.
- When the monkey bread is ready to come out of the oven, you're not going to let it rest in the pan it baked in. You're going to go ahead and pop it right out onto its plate.
- Get a cake plate or a wooden cutting board or a serving dish that is slightly larger than your bundt pan. Using hot pads, very carefully flip your bundt cake upside down (invert it), and lift off the pan. Fingers crossed, and the whole thing will pop out of your pan easily, the underside lovely and caramelized, and your kitchen smelling like heaven.
- Allow the monkey bread to cool slightly so that your fingers and your tongue do not suffer third degree burns when you dip in. If any of the caramel oozes off the sides, feel free to use a rubber spatula to schlop the goodness back onto the top of your bread.
- When the monkey bread comes out correctly, you should be able to dip your fingers inside and pull out lovely chunks of caramelized bread bits. Like bite sized sticky buns. And boy howdy, is it scrumpdillyicious!!
For those of you who like pictures, here you go:
At this point, the bundt pan was barely more than ½ full -- definitely not even 3/4 of the way filled, but I was all out of dough. I honestly thought there wouldn't be enough dough in the pan, and I regretted not making a second batch of dough. But honestly, it was more than plenty!!! The dough rose beautifully in the oven, and baked to perfection.
I thought it looked a wee bit too dark around the edges, but I'd only baked it for about 29 minutes at this point. But it was lovely. I think for me, it might have been better after 28 minutes. I wanted to make sure the insides were baked all the way through.
This is what my monkey bread looked like no more than 12 minutes later. We put the cutting board in the middle of the table, and each of us grabbed a fork. We sat on opposite sides of the table and systematically pulled little pieces off, put them onto our dessert plates, and nibbled. WOW. What a treat!
We obviously decimated the entire thing. My daughter claimed that this new treat was like eating the insides of cinnamon rolls -- all the nice and gooey parts, without the hard crusty outer pieces. My husband, in between happy mmms, said he'd like a wee bit more cinnamon. And when I mentioned that I have a recipe for a savory version of monkey bread, my son said he'd like to eat a garlic parmesan version of the bread. So, I'll definitely be making this again!!!
How might I improve the recipe for next time?
Next time I'm going to roll the pieces in brown sugar and cinnamon (rather than regular sugar and cinnamon), like I normally do when I make cinnamon rolls. I will also add more cinnamon. I may also add in some toasted pecans. And perhaps I'll try not using the maple syrup. I like my caramel sauce nice and sticky, and the maple syrup really did the trick. But when I make cinnamon rolls, I don't use maple syrup. I don't really need to, since the brown sugar and the butter melt together in a lovely way to create a caramel sauce. So, I'll give that a whirl and see if I can perfect the recipe. But honestly, this was pretty darned terrific. The whole thing was decimated in about 12 minutes. Clearly, we liked it!
Alrighty then, until next time!
I'm off to go work on Book 2.5, Jack and Claire's love story.
Who are Jack and Claire? Jack Diamond is a Detective for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, who stars as the protagonist in the Jack Diamond Murder Mystery series. Claire is a pediatric cosmetic surgeon who repairs birth defects and specializes in reconstruction after traumatic injuries. They fell in love in college. After years of separation due to work, marriage, murder and life, they finally find their way back to each other.
You can read all about them in Diamonds for Diamond and No One Noticed. They'll also both appear in Book 3 -- a yet to be named book about a massive casualty shooting on a pedestrian bridge in Portland, Oregon.
Click on the links below and get started. Amazon will ship them to you, or you can download and read the e-book versions now!
You can read all about them in Diamonds for Diamond and No One Noticed. They'll also both appear in Book 3 -- a yet to be named book about a massive casualty shooting on a pedestrian bridge in Portland, Oregon.
Click on the links below and get started. Amazon will ship them to you, or you can download and read the e-book versions now!
What are you waiting for? Go get the books now!
* * * * *
I not only bake and cook, I write murder mysteries too!
Both books are available in paperback and kindle versions
Diamonds for Diamond
(Book 1 in the Jack Diamond Mystery series)
and
No One Noticed
(Book 2 in the Jack Diamond Mystery Series)
Diamonds for Diamond
(Book 1 in the Jack Diamond Mystery series)
and
No One Noticed
(Book 2 in the Jack Diamond Mystery Series)
* * * * *
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