This is a super simple twist on a standard Monkey Bread recipe that is so perfect for Easter or Mother’s Day brunch. My little girl is learning to bake and this is her favorite treat to make. When she first started making monkey bread it is traditionally in a larger cake size and it tends to get messy, my girls fight over the best pieces and it isn’t the easiest dish to serve on a table for brunch. We decided to start making individual size monkey bread muffins and it works out so perfectly now. Much smaller portions, way less mess and still so fun to pull apart and enjoy.
This recipe does call for canned biscuits to keep things simple. I have made monkey bread from scratch many times and played with a few recipes when I was putting this post together. I think the canned biscuits just save so much time and still pack a lot of caramel, brown sugar flavor so ultimately I decided to just keep things easy. You can definitely substitute homemade dough or canned cinnamon rolls if you want extra buttery Monkey Bread.
Here is the simple recipe:
- 1 can biscuits - 16oz
- ½ cup white sugar
- 1 tea cinnamon
- ½ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup butter
- 1 tea vanilla
- Optional- icing:
- ½ cup confectioner's sugar
- 1 tbl milk
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Place ½ cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon into a large bowl or a freezer bag and shake/stir to mix. Set aside.
- Open can of biscuits, separate biscuits and separate again into halves. My can had 8 biscuits so I wound up with 16 round dough circles in total.
- Use a knife or pizza cutter to cut each circle into 4 equal parts.
- Gently roll each slice into a circle shape and drop into sugar/cinnamon mixture- coating each circle well.
- Butter or spray your muffin tins well to avoid sticking.
- Place circles in prepared tin- filling only about ⅔ of the way up the sides as these will expand a lot in baking.
- You can sprinkle a little extra sugar mixture on the circles as you start stacking them up if you like.
- Once your tin is filled, place butter in a saucepan and melt over medium low heat.
- Add brown sugar and vanilla, stirring occasionally until the brown sugar dissolves.
- Pour melted caramel sauce over the top of each muffin.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes until dough is completely baked through and caramelized on top.
- Let sit for about 5 minutes to cool and remove from tin.
- Place on a serving dish and drizzle your confectioners sugar and milk mixture over the top before serving.
This recipe should make about 6 muffins but that will depend on the size of your baking tin. If you are using a regular muffin tin, I suspect this recipe will make about 10 mini muffins. For an oversized muffin tin, I am guessing about 5 and I actually something similar to this Jumbo Muffin Pan
.
I find it faster and less messy to just pour the sugar into a freezer bag, pop in the circles of dough and shake well to coat.
Be very careful not to overfill your tin as the brown sugar will overflow. This is probably a little too full but I always place a baking sheet under my pan just in case to catch any overflow.
And the extra icing is not necessary but does look pretty drizzled over the top of these muffins. Be sure the monkey bread is fairly cool before drizzling so the icing doesn’t melt right off.
And here are a few other recipes you might also enjoy:
Copycat Starbucks Banana Bread
Gooey Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls
Ebelskivers Recipe (stuffed mini pancakes)
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