When they get there, Gus picks up a loaf of bread and brings it to Shawn, both referring to it as monkey bread. The only problem was that it wasn't monkey bread. When I mentioned this to Dana he asked, "what's monkey bread?" I explained the principle to him and he ordered it for breakfast the next morning.
The recipe I found came out of the the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and they call it "Ruth's Coffee Cake," so it has to be good. They use a recipe for Christmas Stolen minus the nuts and candied fruit. So here it goes...
1 pkg dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup warm milk
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
4 Tbl butter, softened
2 eggs
3 cups white flour
melted butter (I used about 1/4 a cup)
1 cup sugar mixed with
2 Tbl cinnamon
Dissolve the yeast into the warm water. Mix milk, granulated sugar, salt, butter. Add yeast and water mixture and beat thoroughly. Add 1 and 1/2 cups flour and mix till well blended. Cover and let rise in a warm place for one hour (at this point it looks more like batter than dough, but let it "rise." It'll get all bubbly a mellow. The directions read "Add enough of the remaining flour so that the dough is easy to handle." I had to add the remaining 1 and 1/2 cups plus almost a whole other cup. So there you go. Anyway, after that, let it chill in the fridge for half an hour.
When you're ready to use (I refrigerated my dough over night and then took it out an hour or so before I was ready to use it.) Roll the dough into a long cylinder about an inch in diameter. Cut off 1 inch pieces and roll them into balls. Dip each ball into the melted butter and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Place into a greased baking tube (I used an angel food cake pan). Bake in a preheated oven 350 degrees oven for 50-60 minutes.
When it's done cooking, remove from the oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes before flipping the bread out onto a plate. It looks terribly impressive.
At least Dana was appropriately impressed. The stolen dough worked well: it was airy and not too sweet. Yum. Photos.
I couldn't wait to eat a bite (or two) before I thought to take some pictures... but you get the idea.
After a little more destruction... They're a great finger food because they're not too sticky. And they make your house smell amazing.
