Hi Bold Bakers!
Monkey bread is big and bold to begin with, as its a lot of little pieces of sweet yeasted dough baked together in a pretty bundt tin. Just the fact that monkey bread is served in a pull-apart fashion gets me going, but cover it all with sticky bun flavors, add in toasted nuts, and I am over the moon.
Trust me, you and whomever you share this with will be too!
Why is it called monkey bread?
Named after the way it’s eaten, when digging into monkey bread you pull little parts of it off and eat it one by one as opposed to taking a slice. Like a monkey!
My Monkey Bread Recipe is made possible by lots of little individual balls of yeasted dough being shaped, dusted in cinnamon sugar then proofed all together in a bundt tin. The cinnamon sugar creates a barrier between each ball of dough allowing them to be pulled away from one another after baking. Making the dough is similar to making a yeasted donut dough, but instead of being shaped into a circle and fried the dough is rolled then baked. The flavor is somewhere across between a donut and a sticky bun, and I can’t really imagine anything better than that.
Before I pile the cinnamon sugar dusted pieces of dough into the bundt tin, I pour caramel sauce in the bottom of the tin. This sticks the dough together, but also glazes the dough and caramelizes it just like a cinnamon roll or sticky bun. This might sound unlike anything you have ever had before, because it is unlike anything you’ve ever had. Seeing as there is no store-bought copycat, you have to make this at home and I am telling you it is well worth it.
How do you shape monkey bread if you don’t have a bundt pan?
To Shape the monkey bread you really let the dough do the work. After the yeasted dough has proofed for the first time, you punch it down. Next, I use a dough cutter, but you can use a knife to cut the do into a bunch of little pieces. After I cut the dough I roll each one using the palm of my hands, tucking the seams of the pieces underneath themselves to form a perfectly round ball. After this, the shape of the tin is what dictates the shape of the finished pecan monkey bread.
This is why I use a bundt tin as it just looks iconic and pretty. If you do not have a bundt tin, you can use a regular large cake tin, but the effect is not quite the same. It’ll still taste GREAT though!
How can you tell monkey bread is done?
This monkey bread bakes up perfectly. Even though the balls of dough may be different in size, they still bake up in the same amount of time. Once the pecan monkey bread has cooled slightly I turn the tin out, revealing toasted nuts and a beautifully caramel glazed monkey bread. This monkey bread tastes every bit as good as it looks.
It’s one of my favorite things to serve to people because it’s not only super gorgeous, but so much fun to eat!
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