Monkey bread

I mentioned that I made monkey bread for Easter, along with the cinnamon rolls. I just used the same dough I used for the cinnamon rolls, melted some butter, mixed up some brown sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt and rolled my sleeves up.

{monkey bread prep}

Because I had never made it before, I used Deb's general instructions, although not the recipe. If you do this (and you should, because it's delicious) do pay attention to her actual instructions. I had more dough than I needed, and I overfilled the bundt pan, recklessly ignoring her instructions to leave plenty of room in the pan (after they are risen in the pan, you want 1 - 2 inches of space at the top and I'd recommend 2).

I don't have pictures of the hilarity that ensued, but you can imagine it - opening the oven on Easter morning, 20 eager people standing around waiting for brunch, only to see little rolls of dough launching out of the pan and all over the oven (they actually popped, rather than just oozed - it was rather impressive). Please note that I was not seeing the hilarity at this point, but I simply plucked the upper layer out of the pan as gracefully as I could and let it finish cooking (and poured myself a mimosa).

{monkey bread}

Luckily, it worked out.

{monkey bread, consumed}

So in sum, monkey bread itself is forgiving. All you need is a sweet yeasted dough, melted butter and some sort of sugar/spice mixture. But do follow the baking instructions.

Personally, I liked the monkey bread more than the cinnamon rolls on the day of, but found them lacking as leftovers. Because they're completely coated in butter and sugar, they don't retain any crisp outer texture after being stored. Happily, this stuff tends to go quickly, so you probably won't have an issue.