Monkey Bread

I have a slight cinnamon obsession. Cinnamon rolls. Monkey Bread. Anything of the like. We’ve been watching Kids Baking Championship and Athena has been very into baking. On a recent episode we watched they made monkey bread. I’ve been wanting to make cinnamon rolls so monkey bread was hardly a stretch.

PTL my child took a nap for the first time in weeks. While she was napping I made the dough and set it to rise. When she woke up I rolled and buttered the dough-balls, and she sugared them before placing them in the bundt pan.

While the bread was baking she helped me make the frosting which was only a little exciting. But nothing beat the pure joy after we turned it out and frosted it.

And now for what you really want- the recipe.

Ingredients for the Bread:
-2 packs active dry yeast
-1c very warm milk
-1/3c brown sugar
-1 egg
-dash of salt
– dash of cinnamon & nutmeg
-1/3c butter
-3c flour + 1/2c in case you need to add a bit more
-1/4 water *only if dough is dry and needs additional liquid

Coating:
1 stick butter
1 1/2c brown sugar
1c white sugar
Spices of choice: cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger, pumpkin spice- cinnamon and clove are my personal favorites

Frosting:
2/3c powdered sugar
1/3c brown sugar
Splash of Vanilla
Dash of salt
1tbsp water

In a mixing bowl put in your milk and sprinkle in your yeast. I usually give it a moment before adding the brown sugar. Let stand about 5min as the yeast activates. It’ll get a bit bubbly and you can see the yeast expand. Once this happens add the rest of your ingredients: egg, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Using your dough hook, mix until combined into a ball. You may need to add a little extra water or a little flour to help get it to the right consistency. It will be just a touch sticky but it should created a good ball on the dough hook. This time I skipped the hand kneading as Athena was helping and allowed the mixer to do the work until the dough was smooth.

Butter a bowl and place the dough in it. Cover with a towel and let rise at least an hour. While it rests, melt your stick of butter and put in a bowl. In a separate bowl, combine your sugars and spices. I sprinkled some of that mix in the bottom of my bundt. It creates a lovely crunchy layer on top. Trust me.

When the dough was done rising, I set up the assembly line for Athena and I. Start pre-heating your oven to 350°. This is a great activity to get littles involved if you’re feeling brave. I pulled dough pieces off, rolled them into balls, and dipped in butter. After placing them in the sugar mixture, she coated them and placed them in the bundt pan! You want a relatively level amount of dough all of the way around so that when it bakes and rises, when you flip it out, it will be somewhat level-ish.

I again covered the dough with a towel to do a little rest & rise before baking. Even in about 10min you could see a decent rise.

We baked for about 30min. The fun with monkey bread is it’s nearly impossible to know if it’s baked. I poked it a few times to see how much give/squish there was, while simultaneously assessing the done-ness of the exposed layer. For us, 30min seemed to be the magic number.

Carefully flip onto a plate, stand, or extra large pie dish like we did. I like using the extra large pie dish so that when we drizzle on the additional frosting, none of it escapes!