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Family-friendly meals made easy!
Make everyday family moments count, with easy recipes that everyone will love. Join our email community to receive tested recipes and tips.
Make everyday family moments count, with easy recipes that everyone will love. Join our email community to receive tested recipes and tips.
Monkey bread is a funny name for a delicious pastry. They are sweet breads made by arranging clumps of biscuit dough, that have been dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar, in a pan. When baked, the clumps stick together to form a loaf. Typically, monkey bread is sweet, but with savory ingredients substituted for the sweet ones, it makes a delicious savory appetizer or side bread.
Monkey breads are fun finger foods because all you need are your fingers to pull apart the spiced-sweet clumps to devour. While the origin of the name isn’t clear, it’s totally possible the name monkey bread comes from having to pulling apart the pieces, which is remarkably similar to how monkeys eat--pulling apart their food with their fingers to enjoy it.
Our easy monkey bread muffins are made in muffin cups, so that each person can have their very own monkey bread to pick up and pick apart. No one can complain when you lick your buttery, cinnamon-sugared fingers! Typically monkey breads are served like a coffee cake—either at breakfast or brunch. With their sweet flavor, we would also qualify them as a delightful dessert…that is of course, if you can wait that long to enjoy them!
It’s easy to make monkey bread muffins. Check out these simple steps and use the complete recipe below, for all the specific steps:
Use regular size muffin cups so that each muffin gets 8 pieces of coated biscuits. It’s important to spray both the bottoms and the sides of the cups with cooking spray. This prevents these little gems from sticking to the pan when baked.
Mix the cinnamon and granulated sugar in a small bowl. Separate the dough into 8 biscuit sections and cut each into 6 pieces. We love to use kitchen shears for this task. It makes quick work of cutting the biscuits into pieces. Roll the dough pieces in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and place 8 of them in each muffin cup.
Heat butter, brown sugar, and water to boiling in a small saucepan on your stovetop. Cook and stir the mixture until the brown sugar is dissolved. This will take about 2 minutes.
Reserve 2 to 3 tablespoons of the glaze to use after the muffins are baked. The remaining rich, buttery sauce is spooned over the biscuit pieces in each muffin cup. This not only infuses the biscuit pieces with caramel flavor, but it also helps hold the pieces together in the muffin shape.
Bake the muffin cups until the muffins are golden brown on top. Immediately remove them from the cups and drizzle with the reserved caramel sauce, for a double hit of caramel flavor.
Eat these rich muffins while they are still warm. They will have the best flavor and texture this way. The melty caramel and buttery-rich flavor is infused in every bite.
Each ingredient in this 6-ingredient recipe has an important role in making these decadent breakfast treats:
Cinnamon and Granulated Sugar: These two ingredients are mixed to roll each piece of biscuit in. This ensures each bite of the muffin has the irresistible sugar-and-spice flavor.
Flaky Layers Buttermilk Biscuits: This dough makes quick work of making these muffins, whenever the mood strikes. There is no waiting for the dough to thaw, like you’d have to if you made monkey bread muffins with frozen bread dough.
Butter: Gives the quick caramel sauce it’s velvety texture and rich flavor. Use only the real thing for these rolls—butter substitutes just won’t cut it here.
Brown Sugar: This gives the caramel sauce it’s classic flavor.
Water: Is added to the caramel sauce so that it’s flowy and liquid and can glaze the coated biscuit pieces with all that sweet, caramel flavor.
These sunshine-bringing morning treats get along with just about any typical egg dishes you would enjoy for breakfast. Try them with scrambled or over-easy eggs or even your favorite quiche. For a complete breakfast or brunch, add some orange juice, coffee and fresh fruit, and you’ll have a beautiful spread without a lot of work.
For a quick breakfast on the go, send your family out the door with one of these muffins in a piece of cooking parchment paper to keep fingers sticky free until they can eat it. Add a peeled hard-boiled egg or a cup of yogurt for them to enjoy in the car on the way to early morning practice.
These little beauties are a little dramatic. Fresh out of the oven, they have amazing flavor and texture. But let them sit around for a while, and they begin to change their ways. The biscuits will begin to soak up the moisture from the caramel glaze, making them gummier and more condensed.
If you do find yourself with leftovers, place them in an airtight container at room temperature. Enjoy them within the next 24 hours. It’s best to enjoy any leftovers at room temperature as trying to reheat them in the microwave will make the biscuits over cooked and condense even more. The microwaves will be attracted to the sugar in the caramel glaze and around each biscuit piece, which will cause them to get extremely hot, affecting the quality of the biscuits.
Once you’ve tried these play-with-your-food sweet treats, you’ll want to try other monkey bread recipes. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with this collection of every monkey bread recipe you could ever want.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Berry-Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread: Is as pretty to look at it is to eat. Made with PillsburyTM Grands!TM Cinnamon Rolls, its extra delicious.
Bacon-Cheese Pull-Aparts: Is it monkey bread, or a casserole? It is both disguised as a savory egg breakfast dish.
Buffalo Chicken Monkey Bread: A delicious take on buffalo chicken that’s easy enough for a weeknight dinner.
| Food Component / Nutrient | Amount | % , Daily Value* |
|---|---|---|
| Total Fat | 16g | 24% |
| Saturated Fat | 8g | 41% |
| Trans Fat | 0g | % Value Not Available |
| Monounsaturated Fat | 2g | % Value Not Available |
| Polyunsaturated Fat | 0g | % Value Not Available |
| Omega-3 | 0g | % Value Not Available |
| Cholesterol | 20mg | 7% |
| Sodium | 670mg | 28% |
| Total Carbohydrate | 68g | 23% |
| Dietary Fiber | 1g | 4% |
| Soluble Fiber | 0g | % Value Not Available |
| Insoluble Fiber | 0g | % Value Not Available |
| Sugars | 39g | % Value Not Available |
| Protein | 5g | % Value Not Available |
| Vitamin D | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Calcium | Value Not Available | 2% |
| Iron | Value Not Available | 10% |
| Potassium | 40mg | 1% |
| Vitamin A | Value Not Available | 4% |
| Vitamin C | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Vitamin E | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Thiamin | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Riboflavin | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Niacin | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Vitamin B6 | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Folic Acid | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Vitamin B12 | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Pantothenic Acid | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Phosphorus | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Magnesium | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Zinc | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Manganese | Value Not Available | 6% |
| Selenium | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Copper | Value Not Available | 0% |
| Beta-Carotene | Value Not Available | % Value Not Available |
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice. | ||
