Our Best-Ever Monkey Bread Is A Combination Of All Our Favorite Breakfast Pastries
If you’re a fan of sticky buns, cinnamon rolls, and other sweet breakfast pastries, let us introduce you to your new favorite—monkey bread.
Transcript
00:00 Hi, I'm Mackenzie and I'm in the Delish Kitchen
00:02 and today we are making a monkey bread.
00:05 This is my favorite recipe of monkey bread, hands down.
00:08 It's completely made from scratch.
00:09 It's a soft yeasted dough coated in cinnamon and sugar
00:12 and lots of butter.
00:14 For our monkey bread, we are going to start
00:16 by making our dough.
00:17 Canned biscuit dough is often used in monkey bread,
00:20 which is a great alternative,
00:22 but I just found I love making a homemade
00:25 yeasted dough for this.
00:26 It's softer, it's fluffier, it has more flavor to it.
00:29 I really love making it and it's worth the time and effort.
00:32 So our milk is warmed.
00:34 You don't want your milk to be too hot
00:37 because that will kill your yeast.
00:38 So to test it, you can put a clean finger in
00:41 and it should just be warm to the touch, not hot, just warm.
00:44 Or you can always use an instant read thermometer
00:46 and it should register between 110
00:48 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
00:50 We're gonna sprinkle our yeast on top.
00:53 We're gonna let that sit on there for about five minutes.
00:55 It'll get really foamy and kind of like wavy and ripply.
00:58 Yeasted dough, I know a lot of people
01:00 are intimidated by it.
01:01 I get it.
01:02 It's more complicated than like your banana bread
01:04 or something like that.
01:05 I think monkey bread is a really great one to practice with
01:08 because you don't have to worry about a certain shape,
01:10 like shaping cinnamon rolls or shaping pretzels.
01:13 Monkey bread is very similar to cinnamon rolls
01:15 in that the dough is enriched,
01:17 which just means it has more fat in it
01:20 from the milk, the butter, and the eggs.
01:23 Enriched doughs often take longer times to rise
01:26 because all that fat is trying to weigh it back down.
01:29 So this is what it should look like when it's ready.
01:31 You can see some like frothy foaminess on the side.
01:33 The yeast is wavy on top, so it's starting to work.
01:36 So now that our yeast is ready,
01:37 we are going to add our flour, sugar, and salt
01:41 to our stand mixer and give that a mix
01:43 because you always, always want to mix in your salt
01:46 before dumping your yeast on top
01:48 because salt kills yeast,
01:50 so you never wanna pour it directly on top of it.
01:52 A quick mix is all that needs.
01:53 And now we're gonna add in our milk and yeast mixture
01:56 and eggs.
01:56 That is mostly mixed together,
02:04 so we can start adding in our butter.
02:06 Do this just one tablespoon at a time
02:08 and let it incorporate before you add in your next one.
02:11 After all of your butter is in,
02:17 let that keep mixing on like a medium-high speed
02:20 for roughly five minutes until you have a nice, smooth dough.
02:23 Our dough is ready to go into our bowl.
02:26 This dough is stickier, but that's okay.
02:28 As it rises, it'll become less sticky.
02:30 It's good that we are ready to go.
02:32 I'm going to grease our bowl down with some cooking spray.
02:35 You can also use butter and then dump our dough into that.
02:38 Cover it with a towel.
02:39 Let your dough rise until it's about doubled in size,
02:42 which should take anywhere from an hour and a half
02:44 to two hours.
02:45 So it's grown.
02:46 You can see it's up over the ledge.
02:48 If you look, I can even show you.
02:50 You can see all like the air bubbles in there.
02:53 Those are good signs.
02:54 If you're not quite seeing
02:56 that your dough has visibly doubled in size,
02:58 but you can see these air bubbles, that's a good sign.
03:01 Now that our dough has risen,
03:02 it is time to divide out and shape
03:04 all of our little pieces of dough into balls
03:07 to put into our bundt pan.
03:09 I'm going to put just a little bit of flour
03:10 down on our surface so that the main piece of dough
03:13 can sit on top of that,
03:14 just to ensure it does not stick to our counter.
03:16 And pat it down just until it's about half an inch thick.
03:21 This is good to knock some of that air out.
03:24 Divide this out into 60 pieces,
03:26 and then we'll roll it into balls.
03:27 If I'm not using a scale,
03:29 this is just how I divide my dough out.
03:31 First, I divide it in half
03:33 so that I know it's going to be 30 and 30 pieces,
03:35 set one half aside.
03:37 With the one half we're working on,
03:38 divide it into three more pieces,
03:40 and then it's 10, 10, 10.
03:42 And then you're going to get pretty good uniform-sized pieces.
03:49 Squeeze it a little bit, kind of help it stick together.
03:52 The less flour you have down on your surface,
03:59 the better your dough is going to stick together.
04:01 So try to use no flour if you can get away with it.
04:04 The less you use, the better.
04:05 We rolled all of our balls,
04:07 so now we're going to mix together our cinnamon and sugar.
04:10 And then we're going to dunk all of our balls
04:12 into some butter, toss it in that cinnamon sugar,
04:14 and then into our bundt pan.
04:16 Very important, before you can add in any of your dough
04:18 to your bundt pan, you want to grease it
04:20 very well with some butter.
04:22 Get all of those nooks and crannies
04:23 so that when you go to flip your monkey bread out,
04:25 it releases.
04:26 I like to use a pastry brush to grease my bundt pans
04:29 because these little bristles can reach all of those spots
04:32 and coat it really well.
04:34 (upbeat music)
04:36 Our bundt pan is finally assembled.
04:54 So now we're just going to cover it again
04:55 and let it rise one more time,
04:57 about 30 minutes to 45 minutes until it is visibly risen.
05:02 (upbeat music)
05:05 Okay, our monkey bread has risen for the second time.
05:11 You can tell it's really grown in the pan.
05:13 It's barely under the lip.
05:15 See how they've like cracked?
05:16 That really tells you that the dough has started to expand.
05:19 But the best test with your yeasted dough
05:22 right before it goes into the oven
05:24 is to do a poke test to one.
05:26 So to do the poke test, you just want to gently poke
05:28 one of your pieces of dough.
05:29 And if it stays, then it's still too firm
05:32 and needs more time to proof.
05:33 But if it slowly comes back
05:36 or even keeps the indent slightly, then it is ready to go.
05:39 It slowly grew back, so we're ready.
05:41 Into a 350 degree oven until it is deeply golden on top,
05:45 about 40 minutes.
05:47 Ooh, oh my goodness.
05:50 Look at how beautiful she is.
05:52 What a monkey bread.
05:55 Let your monkey bread cool for just 10 minutes
05:57 before you flip it out.
05:58 You don't want to let it cool all the way
05:59 in your bump pan because that sugar will start to harden
06:02 and then it won't flip out easily.
06:04 This is what we're flipping it onto.
06:06 I'm just putting plate upside down on top.
06:08 Let gravity do its job.
06:16 Give gravity a moment.
06:17 You can feel it releasing.
06:29 Our monkey bread is cooling,
06:30 so I'm gonna show you how to make the icing for it.
06:32 This is a three ingredient glaze
06:34 that can make anything better.
06:35 In a large bowl with your powdered sugar,
06:37 add cream and vanilla and whisk until smooth.
06:41 Look at our beautiful monkey bread.
06:55 We have that sweet caramelized outside
06:58 that's really sticky and the inside is so soft and fluffy
07:02 and full of butter and cinnamon and sugar.
07:05 It's so good.
07:06 This is when you invite your friends over
07:07 because this is a fun party finger food dish to serve.
07:11 Jackie O loves serving it at Christmas,
07:13 so you can always serve it for your family then.
07:16 Forget your forks, you do not need them.
07:18 This is a fun finger food Bundt cake to serve
07:21 and you can just pull it apart like a little monkey.
07:23 I hope you try this at home.
07:24 It is so fun and easy to make.
07:26 And for more desserts like it, go to delish.com.
07:30 Mm.
07:31 (laughing)
07:32 Ooh, that's good.
07:34 (upbeat music)
07:36 (upbeat music)