Delicious Cinnamon Monkey Bread Recipe

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(from 11 reviews)
36
Monkey Bread Recipe (Pull apart bread)

I was going through a couple of books I have and found this monkey bread recipe in the Baking for Dummies book by Emily Nolan.  This was the first book I bought to learn to bake.  It has all the basic information on baking principles, tools and techniques, a number of recipes, troubleshooting tips, and a lot more. This monkey bread is also called pull-apart bread because it has to be pulled apart with your hands instead of cutting it.

Why is it called the Monkey Bread?

It is believed that monkey bread originated in Hungary. Hungarian immigrants brought their dessert arany galuska ("golden dumpling") with them when they immigrated to America. Monkey bread became the more common term for this Hungarian-Jewish dessert. But why the name "monkey" bread? We can safely assume that it has to do with how the bread is eaten, picking and pulling pieces of the bread just like how a monkey would go about its eating business without caring much about eating etiquette.

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Monkey Bread (aka Pull Apart Bread) Recipe

Prep TimeCook TimeMakes
15 Mins32 Mins16 Bread Pieces
AuthorCategoryMethod
BreadsBaking
Delicious Cinnamon Monkey Bread Recipe
5.0 from 11 reviews
A simple recipe to bake monkey bread (aka pull-apart bread) from scratch with step-by-step pictures using chocolate chips, all-purpose flour, milk, and sugar.
Part-1 Ingredients:
  • 2 cups All Purpose Flour
  • 1/2 cup Sugar
  • 1 tablespoon Baking Powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon Salt
  • 5 tablespoons cut into 5 pieces Cold Butter
Part-2 Ingredients:
  • 1 cup Semisweet chocolate chips
  • 2/3 cup Milk
Part-3 Ingredients:
  • 1/4 cup Sugar
  • 1.5 teaspoons Ground Cinnamon
  • 3 tablespoons melted Butter
Procedure:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350F for 15 minutes. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
  2. In a mixing bowl, sift and combine all the ingredients mentioned in Part 1 except butter.
  3. Using a pastry blender or a few pulses of a food processor, cut the cold butter into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles a coarse meal.
  4. Kneading flour

  5. Stir in the Part 2 ingredients and combine to form a dough.
  6. Add milk to flour

  7. The final dough would look like this.
  8. Final dough

  9. Divide the dough into 16 balls and place in the prepared baking pan. The balls will touch.
  10. Cut into small pieces

  11. Drizzle the balls with the melted butter.
  12. Brush melted butter on the dough

  13. Combine the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the cinnamon. Sprinkle them with the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
  14. Sprinkle cinnamon powder on top

  15. Bake for 30 minutes, until light brown. Cool in the pan and set on a wire rack before removing from the pan.
  16. Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Bread

My Notes:
  1. For this monkey bread recipe, the butter has to be used straight from the refrigerator.
  2. If you don't have a food processor or a pastry blender, you can use 2 knives or 2 forks to cut in the fat. To use a pastry blender, mix the ingredients while cutting into the fats with the blender using a rocking, up-and-down bouncing motion.
  3. To divide the dough into 16 balls, you can follow my method. First, divide the entire dough into 2 equal parts. Roll the 2 parts into 2 separate logs. Cut each log into 8 pieces. While doing this, flour the surface generously. I also sprayed my hands with non-stick oil spray, so handling the dough was easy.
  4. Similarly, use the butter wrapper to grease the baking pan.
  5. I pretty much followed the recipe, but for the 6th step. I melted the 3 tablespoons of butter in the microwave oven, and that was really a lot of butter. My husband was having "are you crazy to pour so much butter and sugar" look on his face. So instead of using the entire butter and sugar mentioned in the recipe, I followed his advice of just brushing the dough with little butter, sprinkling very little sugar, but took another 1.5 teaspoons of cinnamon little cocoa and sprinkled it over the balls of dough.
  6. I baked the bread for 32 minutes. I would advise cooling it in the pan for at least an hour before taking it out. I tried to remove the bread after 30 minutes, and the bread started to fall apart and crumble. Anyway, I managed to get 10-12 good pieces. The bread was very moist inside but a bit dry on the tops. I guess it was because I did not use the entire 3 tablespoons of butter as mentioned in the original recipe. But the taste was phenomenal, with the melted chocolate chips, a hint of sweetness, and a freshly ground cinnamon aroma.
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36 COMMENTS

  1. Kathy

    What a great and easy recipe. I used all vegan ingredients and thought it came out great. I think next time i will add some cinnamon to the dough for some extra flavor but other than that its a keeper!

    Thanks Kathy.

  2. Rajeshwari

    hi madhuram.. this bread turned out very nice, my 3.5yrs old daughter loved it a lot but whole time she was trying to find a monkey inside the bread 😆

    That’s so cute. Hope she had fun pulling the pieces of bread. Thanks for trying the recipe Rajeshwari.

  3. Kelsey

    Hi!
    This is INCREDIBLE!!
    I subbed out the chocolate for 1.5c of bananas and .25c of chocolate.
    SO delicious and my father loved ittt!!

    THANKS!

    That’s new and cool Kelsey. Glad it turned out good.

  4. Isha Patel

    Hi everyone,
    Thank you so much for the recipe. I had lots of left over oats and did not know what to do with them. I tried this recipe using milk powder diluted with water instead of milk and baking soda instead of baking powder. If you use baking soda, then just use half the quantity of baking powder. Also, I added maple and brown sugar quaker oats instead of chocholate chips. I got all the pieces of bread intact and the bread did not crumble even when I served direct hot from the oven. I think this happened because I used a lot of zero calorie butter spray for coating the pan and in the final step, melted the butter and dipped the squares of bread in the liquid butter. Also, since I was trying for the 1st time, I used only half the quantity for everything. This is the 1st time I baked something and it turned out excellent. I can assure you that any milk substitutes or butter substitutes will work fine since I used them and the bread turned out just the way as shown in the picture.

    Isha, thank you for trying the recipe and the detailed feedback. Substituting oatmeal for chocolate chips is a good and healthy idea.

  5. kim

    ❓ Could you use a non-dairy shortening or margarine instead of the butter and soymilk instead of milk? My kids are also allergic to dairy.

    Hi Kim, I have baked using Earth Balance Vegan Butter in some recipes, which call for butter and the baked goods turn out good. So I’m sure that you could use non-dairy shortening and soymilk as well. Check here for other vegan baking recipes from my blog:
    https://www.egglesscooking.com/category/vegan/baking-vegan/

  6. susan

    I was looking for something to bake, which did not take eggs (since we were out), and ran across this recipe and it was wonderful. I did substitute the milk with 1/3 c. sour cream and 1/3 c. soy milk. My son loved them. Thanks!

    You’re welcome Susan. I’m so glad that your son liked it.

  7. Lata

    Hi Madhuram,

    I made this recipe last evening with only 1 cup of flour, I got about 7. And must say this was awesome!! and easy too.

  8. Madhuram

    Dhivya, Welcome to my blog!

    You can just add the plain milk – no need to boil. Let me know if you liked the bread.

  9. Dhivya

    great receipe!!! but have a small doubt , shuld the milk be boiled before mixing ? pls tell me so that it will be helpfull for me to make the cake

  10. Madhuram

    Kamala, thank you for sending the ingredient.

    Nandita, that’s a very good combination. I would try it the next time.

    Thanks Uma, Cham, Arundathi, Ranji, Rachel, Divya, Spillay, Sowmya, Madhavi, Bhawana.

    Anamika, it’s my pleasure. You have such a wonderful blog.

    Rama, welcome to my blog. Hope you find it interesting.

    Thanks Sia. Try it and you would love the taste too.

  11. sia

    i love the title madhu, monkey bread 😉 😛

  12. Rama

    That bread looks lovely…

  13. anamika: the sugarcrafter

    Madhu..first of all ..thank you for visting my blog…and leaving such lovely words….in fact,i simply love the eggless recipes that your have been putting in the posts..and this eggless Chocolate Chip and Cinnamon Monkey bread recipe is good. Good, you posted them !

  14. Bhawana

    This looks very nice dear..

  15. Madhavi

    Hey..lovely recipe..looks great, yummmmmm!!!thanxxx for sharing..

  16. sowmya

    monkey bread looks delicious…

  17. Spillay

    I can almost smell it all the way here 🙂 . Looks so good.

  18. DivyA Vikram

    lovely monkey bread..looks too yumm..but taste good with hot cupa tea..

  19. rachel

    Like the name monkey bread!!!

    its baked beautifully!!

  20. ranji

    yummy monkey bread madhuram…great step by step instructions!!!thanks for sharing

  21. Arundathi

    Thanks for the step-by-step photos, Madhu. The bread looks absolutely delicious. Sometimes, you just have to use all the butter, huh! 😀

  22. Cham

    Delicious monkey bread 😛 Is there any leftover ❓ Nice way to use this special ingredient 😉

  23. Uma

    that bread looks lovely, Madhu! Love the name too.

  24. nandita

    I did not know that pull aparts were also called monkey-bread 😯 cute name for a nice bread, i’d love to eat this dipping in milk 🙂

  25. kamala

    The bread has come out beautifully.Glad u like the ingredient.