The Riptide goes bananas for Monkey

Bread

By Emma Deines, Content Editor

Monkey Bread is a traditional Christmas morning treat in my family. It is a perfect snack to get us through opening presents or get the Riptide staff through a stressful Tuesday morning. The best way I can think to describe it is cinnamon-roll pull-apart in a bundt cake. The fluffy pieces of biscuit bread are covered in cinnamon and sugar that caramelizes in the oven to make an amazing (but sticky) cinnamon-sugar glaze.

At my house, we prepare the dough pieces the night before and bake it early Christmas morning. One of my favorite memories every year is the suspense of gathering around the kitchen island to watch my mom flip the bundt cake over, and now I have that memory with the Riptide too.

This recipe is super easy to bake on your own because it uses ready-bake biscuit dough from the store. More advanced bakers can make their own dough, but especially for an early morning treat, premade dough is the way to go.

Monkey Bread is best served warm because the cinnamon-sugar glaze hardens into caramel as it cools. Usually, Monkey Bread doesn’t even last long enough to go cold at my house. If it does, just put your piece in the microwave for a few seconds to warm it up again!

In order to write this article, I brought in some monkey bread for the Riptide to try. The responses were overwhelmingly positive.

“This is like happiness in my mouth,” Deputy Editor Lila Cohen said.

“It smells criminally good,” Managing Editor Savannah Butcher said.

“This is so good, I could eat the whole pan,” Riptide advisor Kara Sears said.

Monkey Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 cans of ready-bake biscuits (we use the Pillsbury ones)
1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
A gallon-size Ziploc bag
A 12 cup fluted bundt pan

Directions:

In a gallon Ziploc bag, mix the cinnamon and sugar. Take out the biscuits and cut each biscuit into quarters to make biscuit bites. Put the dough pieces in the Ziploc bag. Close the ziplock bag and shake well, so that all the pieces are evenly covered and there isn’t extra sugar at the bottom of the bag. The dough is now ready to bake, but this is where my family leaves it in the fridge overnight.

When you’re ready to bake it, oil a bundt pan and put the biscuit pieces in, spreading them out evenly. Don’t squish them down too much! Mix the melted butter and brown sugar in a small bowl, then pour the mixture over the biscuit pieces. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 35 to 40 minutes. When the cinnamon topping melts, it turns dark brown and looks done, but be careful not to take out bundt pans too early or you might get doughy pieces in the middle. Cool for 5 minutes.

Okay, here comes the last and most exciting step: flipping it over! Use oven mitts to flip the bundt pan over onto a cookie sheet. You can set it down and bang it a couple of times. If it still isn’t coming out of the pan, you can use something to unstick the bread from the inside of the pan. Once it’s on the cookie sheet in all its caramelized-bundt glory, cut it into slices and serve it to your family. I hope you enjoy it as much as the Riptide did!