Seven Acres Farm: Monkey Bread for JC

Izaak's friend group has changed this year, and some different boys have been hanging at our place. Sweet boys. Good boys. Boys like Izaak. Last night we had two of them over, and this morning one of them woke up as a 14 year old. That called for monkey bread for breakfast.

There's a short method and a long method for making monkey bread. Before I became baking-obsessed, I used the short method. I'm sure there's no shame in it, but since I'm all about 'nothing processed' that I can help anymore, I go with the long way. The short method means buying loaves of frozen bread dough. The long method means making the dough from scratch. You could probably buy some jar-kind of caramel topping to pour over the frozen bread dough if you wanted really fast, but I'm not into that. This monkey bread has a secret ingredient in the topping that we think makes it extra perfect. I'll share it with you today, in honor of JC, who can now get his school driving permit. God help his mama.

Monkey Bread

Bread dough adapted from Carla P's Amish White Bread Loaves, shared at Tasty Kitchen

5.5 c bread flour

2/3 c sugar

1 t salt

1.5 T yeast

1/4 c canola oil

2 c warm water

1 c white sugar

1 T cinnamon

1 c brown sugar

1 c vanilla ice cream

1/2 cup butter (one stick)

In a glass measuring cup with 2 cups of pretty warm (but not super hot) water, whisk in yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar. Allow the mixture to proof for about 10 minutes.

As it does, mix together the flour, remaining sugar and salt. When the yeast mixture is ready, add it and the oil into the flour mixture and combine. Then using a dough hook, allow your Kitchenaid to knead the dough for about 8 minutes. You could be very old school and knead the dough yourself, but I'm not that into doing things the long way. As the Kitchenaid is doing its thing, grease a bowl for the dough to rise in. When the dough is kneaded, put it into the greased bowl.

I like to turn my oven on for a minute or two to warm it up, then turn the oven light on and turn the oven off. I put a damp kitchen towel over the top of the bowl and place the whole thing into the slightly warmed oven. Let the dough rise until it's doubled, which will take about an hour. While it's rising, grease an angelfood cake pan. In a bowl, combine 1 cup of white sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon.

When the dough has doubled, punch it down. You're ready to make the dough balls. Tear off a chunk of dough and roll it into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Go with ping-pong to golf ball sized pieces. How's that for technical?

Put each dough ball into the angelfood cake pan. When they're all in there, pour any remaining cinnamon sugar over the top and shake it a bit to distribute.

Allow the dough balls to rise again. Be careful about how much you let them rise, though. I did a half hour, and mine rose too high. The problem is that there isn't much room left at the top of the pan, and when you pour the caramel sauce on top it will bubble over in your oven as the dough bakes up, which causes an unholy mess.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a glass bowl, melt the butter and ice cream together. Whisk in the brown sugar. Then pour the sauce over the dough.

Now it's starting to look yumma. Put your monkey bread in the oven for a half hour. To be safe, you might consider lining a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and putting that in the rack under your monkey bread in case some of the caramel sauce bubbles over. Don't be like me and have to clean your oven after this.

After you pull the bread from the oven, let it sit. My original recipe, borrowed from a friend years ago, suggested to wait a half hour before flipping the angelfood pan over onto a plate. There is no way my family can wait that long. I'm impressed if we can give it 10 minutes.

At this point, everyone can descend and tear off pieces of the monkey bread. There is jockeying at my house for the 'best' pieces, which means the ones with the most caramel. I always let my family go first, but since I'm sharing with you, and you're the guest, I snitched a few pieces before anyone else got to it.