Grandma Dragon’s Recipee
Ingredients:
- 30 oz. – Buttermilk biscuits (the storebought kind in those cans that sort of explode when opened).
- 3/4 cup – Sugar (regular)
- 1 teaspoon – Cinamon
- 1/2 cup – raisins
- 1/2 cup – Chopped nuts
- 1 cup – brown sugar
- 1/2 cup – butter
- Small amount – Shortening or oil
Instructions:
- Grease a 10 inch tube pan (or bunt cake pan).
- Cut each biscuit into fourths (or pieces roughly the size of a quarter).
- Mix the regular sugar and cinamon in a plastic bag. Then add the biscuit pieces and shake to coat all the pieces. You may have to add the biscuit pieces a few at a time.
- Put loose layers of biscuit pieces in the tube pan. In between each layer of biscuit pieces add some nuts and raisins.
- In a seperate pot melt the butter and brown sugar together over medium heat until they boil, stirring regularly. Boil them for 1 minute.
- Carefully pour the boiling butter and brown sugar mixture over the layers of biscuit already in the tube pan.
- You may have wanted to pre-heat the oven to 350°F while you were doing all those previous steps, but it’s too late now. Sucka!
- Bake the whole thing at 350°F for 35 minutes or to taste.
- Let stand for 15 minutes before removing.
You may have to eat this stuff out of the pan. It tastes good but can be difficult to remove. Also, if you’re not eating it with your fingers it’s not traditional monkey style.
Note: the author can neither confirm nor disprove the theory that monkey bread is so named because it’s gooy and handfuls can easily be flung at folks like so much feces in the primate house.
Peter, you rock! Someone made monkey bread for me about 10 years ago, and I had completely forgotten about it. Not only have you brought a delicious dish back to the front burner (ha!), you have provided a good-looking recipe, which I will have to try out immediately.
About that paragraph before the note: the trick is to really grease up the pan so that the monkey bread will slide out and stand on its own on a plate. I recommend butter-flavored Crisco. Amateur bakers sometimes have a tendency to undergrease the pan. If it’s not greased up enough, the sugar will melt and the resulting syrupy substance will recrystalize on the pan in the immediate moments after removal from the oven, making the monkey bread impossible to remove in one piece. That said, you don’t want to use too much grease, or you will have monkey bread sitting in a pool of melted shortening, and that’s all you will taste.
So anyhoo, thankyouthankyouthankyou! I now have a unique dessert to bring to my friend’s cookout tomorrow. Excellent timing.
Wow Megan. Glad I could help.
I made this stuff on Thursday for a pot-luck dinner at work and it went over really well. Though later when I brought the left-overs to my roleplaying group one guy was hating on the cinamon and rasins.
I think next time I’ll try substituting 1/4 cup cocoa powder for the cinamon and some sort of candies (chocolate chips or reeces pieces maybe) for the rasins, just to see what comes of it.
Thanks for the advice about the crisco. I am an amateur baker and so probably didn’t use enough shortening. Although to be honest I didn’t even try to remove the stuff from the pan it was baked in, just assuming it to be a lost cause.
Yeah – I’m glad you could help too Pete. Your recipe inspired Megan to go away and make Monkey Bread – and I just had some and let me tell you what. IT IS GREAT. I really, really like it. I just had a big chunk of it for breakfast this morning. Monkey Bread is where it is at!
Watch out though loak: It seems to be very bad for your teeth. Lots of sugar, and it’s really sticky sugar to boot.
Well – it might be bad for the teeth, but it is better than a carpet mommy.
Note: I’ve just tried a new variation on monkey bread: Chocolate Monkey Bread.
Basically it’s cooked the same except for the following exceptions:
Leave out: Rasins, Nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
Substitute white sugar in place of the brown.
In place of the cinnamon add: 1/4 cup of cocoa powder & 1/4 cup Godiva chocolate powder.
In place of rasins add: 1/2 cup of chocolate chips.
This stuff turns out great, although it seemed the white sugar didn’t melt quite the same way as the brown sugar did and coated the top more, not sinking in as much.
Note: It also occurs to me that maybe adding 1/2 cup of mini-marshmallows in place of the chopped nuts might have been a good idea, but didn’t think of it at the time. If anyone tries it let me know how it turned out.
That sounds like a pretty tasty innovation. I hope Megan reads your comment soon and get the urge again to make the Monkey Bread.
Two updates on the Chocolate Monkey Bread:
1) If you don’t have Godiva chocolate powder you can just add a bit more regular cocoa. Out of necessity I tried this last night and no one seemed to complain today.
2) Instead of substituting standard granular sugar for the brown sugar in the chocolate monkey bread, I used powdered sugar instead. Seemed to mix an boil a bit more easily, though you still have to stir it a heck of a lot to get the sugar and butter to mix well.