We have had so many reasons to celebrate in the last few weeks – graduations, recitals, school being finished, cousins moving home, and several birthdays. My daughter turned nine last week, and this is one birthday where it struck me more than others. Her last birthday as a single digit. Exactly halfway between eighteen. She’s now going into fourth grade. Only two more years and she will be in middle school. It seemed like it was just yesterday – just yesterday, and she was walking through the double doors into kindergarten. Whew, sometimes reflection can be so amazingly powerful. I feel so blessed to be her mother.
Monkey Bread
Surprisingly when I asked her, “What kind of cake would you like for your birthday?”
Her one and only response was, “Monkey Bread.” If you’ve never experienced the gooey buttery sugariness of monkey bread – it is delectable.
Butter, sugar, caramelized brown sugar over fluffy biscuits. It’s pretty spectacular warm from the oven. She loves anything with butter, sugar, and bread. No cake? I wondered how exactly I would make this work as a cake? I made the traditional bundt pan method first.
Monkey Bread Muffins
For her birthday party, I thought it would be much easier to make individual “muffins”; which made it easy for the kids to eat and pass out. The trick to the muffins is to add the butter / brown sugar mixture to the muffin tin first. Then add the biscuits. By the way, the kids had so much fun making this with me. They were so helpful in tossing the biscuits in the sugar mixture – nothing the vacuum can’t pick up later, ha! Lastly, I added icing and sprinkles because it’s just not a birthday without sprinkles 😉
Monkey Bread
Ingredients
- 3 10 oz cans buttermilk biscuits
- 1 c. sugar
- 2 t. cinnamon
- 1 c. 2 sticks unsalted butter
- 1/2 c. brown sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Open all three cans of biscuits and cut into quarters
- Combine 1 c. white sugar with 2 t. cinnamon in a shallow bowl.
- Drop all biscuit quarters into the cinnamon sugar mix. Toss until evenly coated.
- Spread into a bundt pan
- Melt 2 sticks of butter together with 1/2 c. brown sugar
- Stir together over medium-high heat until boiling, and one color. Pour over biscuits.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
- Allow to cool for 15 minutes before inverting on a platter.
- To make Monkey Bread Muffins - use a muffin tin, and add 1-2 T. of butter brown sugar mix to each muffin first. Then add the biscuits ( about 8 pieces per muffin). Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool for 1-2 minutes then invert.
- For the icing - Mix 3/4 c. powdered sugar, 1/2 t. vanilla, 2 t. milk. Whisk until smooth then drizzle on top of muffins.
