gastrobuddy: Recipe: Monkey bread

Carla and I love monkeys, so when I happened across this recipe I knew I had to make it. Part of the intrigue was the inherent craziness of it - a dessert made not only from a yeast dough, but divided into a multitude of little balls, rolled in butter and cinnamon sugar, then reassembled and baked off as one. You also aren't allowed to cut it with a knife since you can just pull the pieces off as you eat them.

Bruja likes to help me proof bread

The first recipes I came across called for instant biscuit mix, which turned me off, then I came across one by Chef Michael Smith on the Food Network site that used yeast, so I decided to give it a whirl. It's also this recipe that gave me so much trouble converting ingredients to weights, but I finally got it, and it's all weighed out for you here. One example of why I'm a stickler for weighing ingredients is flour - a sifted cup of flour will weigh a lot less than a packed one, and throw the recipe out of whack. Sorry Chef, I didn't follow the recipe exactly, I added some sweet spice to the dough, and during the execution the flour and liquid amounts were adjusted slightly as I saw it coming together in the mixer - it was a bit like math class here as I was subtracting amounts from a recipe recently converted. Happily, the result was fantastic and the measurements as I did them are all here. I also topped it with some chopped up banana chips after cooking - monkeys love their bananas. I served it for my monkey brother's birthday with some mango sorbet that Carla made - perfect.

You will need:

2oz / 56g         unsalted butter, melted
14oz (just under 2C) / 400g milk (homo) - yes I weigh my milk - the scale is already out
1/4C (1oz) / 30g            golden or brown sugar - loose pack if using 1/4C measure
1                    vanilla bean (scraped) - 1Tbs / 15ml extract, but the dough will be wetter
1Tbs (0.3oz) / 8.5g              instant yeast - or 10.3g active dry yeast - or 25.5g fresh
4C (18oz) / 515g             flour

punch it down and cut it

1tsp / 6g    salt
1/2tsp / 0.5g                          grated nutmeg
1/2tsp / 0.5g                          ground cinnamon

for the rolling:

1/2C / 113.5g                        unsalted butter, melted
1C / 200g                              white sugar
2Tbs / 6g                               ground cinnamon

roll the balls

for the topping:

chopped banana chips

Method:

- unless using instant yeast, warm up a bit of the milk, add a portion of the sugar and bloom the yeast
- if using instant yeast, mix it with the flour and salt
- mix the vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and brown sugar
- in a mixer with a dough hook, mix the melted butter, spiced sugar, milk and yeast

layer into the bundt pan

- add the flour mixture and mix until dough is smooth, shiny and comes away from the bowl - it will be a bit wet and sticky
- turn it out onto a floured board and round up
- place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and place in a warm area to proof
- once double in size, punch it down and turn out onto a floured board

- cut dough into small pieces and ball them up
- melt the rolling butter
- mix the cinnamon sugar for rolling
- lightly oil a bundt pan
- coat the balls in butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar, then layer them up in the pan
- set the pan in a warm place and let proof
- set oven to 340F / 171C
- place pan in the oven and cook about 45 minutes - rotate if necessary
- when cooked, remove from oven, let rest a moment, then turn out onto your serving dish