Monkey Bread Muffins Recipe - The Recipe Critic (2024)

FAQs

What culture is monkey bread from? ›

Monkey bread gets its name by the method in which it is eaten: picking off chunks of buttery, gooey dough with your fingers not unlike a monkey grooming his buddy (which is actually a weird thing to name a food after, if you really think about it.)

When the Reagans were in the White House, The New York Times ran a small story with the family's Christmas menu. One of the dishes served was Monkey Bread. Also called Bubble Bread, Monkey Bread is a lightly sweetened yeast dough, but instead of shaping the dough into a loaf, it's formed into balls.

Bread Ingredients

Bananas: You will need 3 ripe bananas for the bread dough and 3 more bananas that will be diced and layered in between the balls of bread dough. Yeast: I used instant yeast in this recipe. It is also called quick rise or fast-rising yeast. Milk: I prefer whole milk in this recipe.

Dating back to the 1880s in Hungarian literature, Hungarian immigrants brought this dish with them when they immigrated to America and began introducing it into the country's food landscape when Hungarian and Hungarian Jewish bakeries began selling it in the mid-twentieth century.

There are many fun theories regarding the origin of the name “Monkey Bread” – one being the resemblance the loaf has to a monkey-puzzle tree.

My dad buttered the inside of the pan, and we pressed the balls of dough into that. The final product, a ring-shaped cluster of sticky, sweet bread balls, goes by many names, including bubble loaf, pinch-me cake, and sticky bread, but we call ours monkey bread.

Monkey Bread, aka Puzzle Bread, aka Hungarian Coffee Cake, may not have originated in the United States but in Hungary, where my paternal grandmother was born. And so, in my search for a dish that was previously unknown to me, I am somehow guided to an ancestral tradition. I think that grandmom would be pleased.

Bake the monkey bread for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the top of the loaf is golden brown. An instant read thermometer inserted into the center of the loaf should read between 190°F and 200°F. Serve and store. Serve immediately, or warmed.

Despite the name, there are no primates in this bread. According to conventional lore, the fanciful term comes from its appearance -– pieces of dough placed next to and on top of each other, the baked bread said to resemble a barrel of monkeys.

What is the history of monkey bread? ›

Some culinary historians speculate that monkey bread evolved from Parker House rolls, the late 19th century crescent-style rolls nestled side by side in a sheet pan (when baked in a ring mold or Bundt pan, the bread was said to resemble the prickly Chilean monkey puzzle tree).

Meaning of monkey bread in English

a sweet food made from small balls of bread dough (= a mixture made of flour and water) that have been covered in butter and baked together: Monkey bread is easy to separate once it is cooked.

Baobab's medicinal benefits…

Powdered monkey-bread is used as a remedy for exhaustion. It aids recovery after illness like flu, or after sports. It also has strong anti-inflammatory properties and helps fight joint pain and other inflammations. Finally, this powder promotes digestive health and protects the liver.

Each bite tastes like the sticky delicious center of cinnamon rolls. Monkey bread is served pull apart style, similar to my cinnamon roll wreath, where everyone tears off a piece—just like how monkeys pick at their food. You can have monkey bread for breakfast, brunch, or dessert.

Monkeys like bananas because bananas are sweet, which means they are a source of energy-rich material. In the wild, most monkeys have a diet that is mainly comprised of fruits. They are thus naturally predisposed to like fruits. Bananas are a particularly sweet fruit and are, therefore, a delicacy to the primates.

Some people think it got its name from the dish-like container that an organ grinder's monkey would use to collect tips from the people watching the performance. Tuxton China says it was the small dish that royalty would use to have their servants test their food for poison.

She heard the name monkey bread only after moving to Arkansas as a college student. Fazekas traced the dessert back to the 1880s, claiming that it was Hungarian immigrants who introduced it to the United States.

South Sudan. Consuming monkey meat is a defining feature of the Bari people, who "perceive the eating of monkey meat as a boundary between them and non-indigenous people"; in recent years, however, some Bari tribe members have shied away from the practice because of how similar monkeys look to humans.

Used to test for poison: Hundreds of years ago, kings and queens would have monkeys test their food to see if it was poisoned. A piece of each food would be given to the monkey in a small bowl to taste test, hence the name.