MONKEY BREAD

I admit it! I'm an internet newsletter junkie. If some corporation or organization has a newsletter or regular online updates and the topic is of interest to me, sure – I'll sign up. So, I get lots of email. I can usually tell at a glance if I'm interested. It seems manageable.

Just the other day, I received an update from the good folks at Bisquick with a featured recipe – "monkey bread." My curiosity was piqued at once. "It's Grandma Ina's bread!" I exclaimed to myself. Remember last month when my half-brother, Chuck, reminisced about the delicious cinnamon bread that Ina baked in a casserole dish? And I mentioned that my dad had tried to duplicate that bread without success? I hadn't been able to find a recipe anything like it – until that newsletter from Bisquick.

So I did a little research. "Monkey bread," also called Hungarian coffee cake, golden crown, pinch me cake, or bubble loaf, first appeared in American women's magazines and community cookbooks in the 1950s. Well, so, maybe monkey bread isn't exactly what Grandma Ina made – but since I'll probably never know her secret, I decided to have a bit of fun with this recipe. Instead of using the time-saving Bisquick recipe, however, I chose to return to a yeast dough.

As Mike left the house to hunt this morning, I pulled the bread machine out and chose a recipe for rich sweet dough. Yes, I know – Ina didn't have a bread machine, but I am not a practiced maker of breads. So I had the bread machine make the dough for me while I went shopping. The bread was ready when I got home.

I turned it out on a floured cloth and pinched off pieces that I rolled into little balls. One by one I dipped the balls into real melted butter, rolled them in cinnamon sugar, and layered them in a well-buttered casserole dish, sprinkling a few raisins as I went along. I placed the monkey bread into a warm oven to rise, then baked it at 375 for 35 minutes. I can post pictures, but I can't send you the wonderful aroma of baking cinnamon bread or the sound of the vintage Christmas music playing in the background.

The monkey bread was just coming out of the oven as Mike arrived home. We ate a little lunch while the bread cooled, then began to pull off and devour pieces of the warm cinnamon bread. It was "Christmas morning" good. It's a bit embarrassing to admit we ate fully half of it before we made ourselves quit.

"This is the best thing you've made in years!" exclaimed Mike.

"You make it sound like I'm not a good cook," I replied.

"And that's not the case, so that tells you something," was Mike's comeback. Yes, it tells me that real egg and real butter make a real difference in the final product.

So -- was it Ina's bread? My guess -- darned close. I suspect she didn't make the little balls, but she probably swirled cinnamon and sugar through the dough as she finished her kneading. KW