Monkey Balls April 21, 2013

Yield

A 13″ x 9″ pan of breakfast goodness.

Preparation Time

Overnight for bread dough to thaw and rise. The next morning, about 1.5 hours.

Introduction

I’ve looked for the perfect sticky bun, but I hate rolling out dough. So I tried to combine sticky buns with monkey bread recipes and came up with this. So simple. Most ingredients are approximate.

Special Tools

• Baking towel desirable. A baking towel is a white towel that may be sold as a dish towel, but they’re oversized. Something like these. You don’t NEED it, but you do need the towel to cover the dough and pan completely. I have used bath towels in the past because I was desperate.
  
• While I used a 13″ x 9″ pan, you can use just about any size, if you are comfortable adjusting baking times. A Bundt pan shape creates a beautiful presentation.
  
  
• To eat it, you can cut it like cake and put it on a plate or you can pull it apart like monkey bread.
  

Ingredients

• Cooking Spray (such as Pam)
  
  
• 2 loaves of frozen bread dough
  
• ½ Cup Butter (1 Stick)
  
• 1½ Cups Granulated Sugar
  
• 2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
  

Ingredients for Glaze (Optional)

• 1 Tablespoon Butter
  
• 2 Tablespoons Milk
  
• 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
  
• 1 Cup Confectioner’s Sugar
  

Directions for Monkey Balls

The night before: Spray a cookie sheet or lasagna pan or similar with the cooking spray. Place the two loaves of frozen bread dough on it, a couple of inches apart. Spray the dough with cooking spray. Cover with a clean, white baking towel and allow it to sit overnight.

1. Melt the stick of butter in a medium bowl. Put the sugar and cinnamon in a similar size bowl.
   
2. Spray the baking pan on the sides and bottom.  (If desired, you can now place walnuts and raisins in the bottom of the pan, and after baking, turn pan upside down on a tray.)
   
3. Take the dough, which has now raised, and roll into balls about the size of donut holes from the bakery. Bigger than an inch, but not two-inch balls. You can use one hand to dip the balls into the butter and one for the sugar so you don’t end up with a sloppy mess. Put one ball in the butter to coat it. Then put it in the sugar mix to coat it. Then place in the baking pan. Generally, one layer is all a flat baking pan will be able to hold because, upon baking, these will almost overflow your cake pans.
   
4. Once the pan is covered on the bottom, place on the counter with a towel over it again for about an hour.
   
5. Heat oven to 350°F. Bake about 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown. Remove from oven. Let cool about 15 minutes and drizzle with glaze.
   

Directions for Glaze

1. Melt the tablespoon of butter in a small bowl. Mix in the confectioner’s sugar and vanilla. Add a little milk at a time until the glaze can be drizzled but isn’t watery.
   
2. Drizzle over the whole Monkey Ball cake.