Thursday, August 21, 2008

monkey bread


I had never heard of Monkey Bread until I was in university. At a friend's wedding shower, I tried and fell in love with it. It's a very simple sweet bread, perfectly designed so you can pull off perfectly sized pieces to eat. This recipe uses the bread machine. I set it last night to be done the dough cycle first thing this morning, so by 8:30 we had a fresh bready treat to eat. Here's the recipe:

Monkey Bread

1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp water
1 large egg
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
2 1/4 cups flour
4 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast (instant rise)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp melted butter

Add milk, water, egg, salt, butter, flour, yeast and 4 tsp sugar to bread machine. Select dough cycle. When cycle is complete, cut into a bunch of little balls. Roll each in melted butter, then brown sugar and cinnamon mixture. Place coated dough in bundt pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, approximately 30 minutes. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes. (If you're using a non-ring pan, it may take longer for the middle ones to cook.) Invert onto a plate, and serve warm.

Yeast tip: Rather than buying the $4 113 gram "Bread Machine" jar of yeast from the grocery store, at Yarmouth Natural (and probably most other natural foods or bulk stores) they have "Instant Yeast" which is the same thing, for a lot less. A 125 gram bag costs $1.25. As Phillip would say, "Niiiigh." (Translation: "Nice.")

And here's a little monkey who enjoyed a bite before his nap.

5 comments:

Angela said...

This is one of Peter's family recipes, which I had never tried before his Mom has them. They call them "pluckits" (cute!) and after rolling in the other stuff they roll them in chopped walnuts. Yummm! The recipe I have takes all day (three rise times, etc ...) so I'll have to try yours!

Sarah G said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sarah Gomez said...

Oh gosh -- that is a little Sherrie Landers in that last picture!! (sorry about the deleted comment -- I wrote it with a wrong account)

Sherrie said...

Oh, I hope you like it, A! Let me know if it's as good as the family recipe. :)

Sarah, I've been hearing that a lot lately! Phillip definitely has Adam's eyes and build, but everyone seems to think he looks like me. :) When are you going on your free trip?

Joanna Schmidt said...

I hope you are okay with me using this photo of P. He is scrumptious!!!!!