I don’t know why this is called Monkey Bread. Some people call it Pull-Apart Bread. It is pretty much a pile of cinnamon rolls baked together. It’s yummy and you just pull off pieces to eat, which makes it an easy breakfast to make one day and eat on for two or three days. But it never seems to last that long because it is hard to stop eating once you’ve had your first piece.
- 1 roll Grands refrigerated biscuits
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 stick butter or oleo-margarine (vegetable oil sticks like Parkay, Imperial, etc.)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- extra 2-4 Tablespoons butter or a lot of Pam to grease cake pan
Preheat oven to 375°F. Open roll of biscuits by peeling off the marked corner of the paper wrapper and hit the can against a sharp corner, like the edge of your cabinet. The tube’s closing seam will explode a bit, which will startle you, but the biscuits remain inside the cardboard tube. Pry apart the sides of the tube with your fingers to remove the biscuits.
Using kitchen scissors or a sharp knife cut each round biscuit across the center and across the center again, creating four pizza-style quarters from each round biscuit.
Using extra butter or a lot of Pam, grease the insides of an 8-inch cake pan very well. This recipe has a tendency to stick to the pan, so lots of grease helps you get all the pieces out more easily.
Pour sugar and cinnamon into a sandwich or quart-size Ziploc bag. Seal and shake to combine sugar and cinnamon. Open the bag and place 4-8 biscuit quarters in the bag. Seal and shake to coat biscuit pieces with cinnamon sugar.
Take the cinnamon sugar coated biscuit quarters out of the bag and arrange on the bottom of the greased cake pan. Repeat with 4-8 more biscuit quarters and add them to the cake pan. Repeat until all the biscuit quarters have been coated and placed in the cake pan. You will have some cinnamon sugar left over. Save it to sprinkle over hot buttered toast, oatmeal, or fruit cobblers and pies.
When all the biscuit pieces are in the pan, melt the butter in a cup in the microwave by heating it for 30 seconds on half power. Stir to dissolve any remaining pieces and then add the vanilla. Stir to combine and pour the liquid all over the cinnamon sugar coated biscuit pieces in the cake pan.
Bake 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool 15 minutes before inverting the pan over a large plate. Any remaining liquid in the pan will run down over the biscuit pieces. Enjoy warm or at room temperature the next day.
Does not reheat well in the microwave. If you just have to have the warm yummi-ness again after the bread has cooled, try this: take a heaping 1/2 cup of pieces and place on a microwave safe plate. Wet a paper towel and squeeze out the excess water. Place damp paper towel over bread pieces and heat for 10-15 seconds on high in the microwave.
Based on a recipe by Melanie Crockett in the Sacred Art of Cooking cook book, circa 1999