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The Monkey Bread saga – part 2

The continuation of the Monkey Bread saga continues…click here for part 1 from yesterday.

* * *

My tween girl and I were baking bread (me) and Monkey Bread (her).  While the doughs were rising, and the dishes piling up, and I had my back turned for a moment, she disappeared.

Because, kids. 🙃

So I went searching for her. Found her on the front porch.

Seems Busty the cat came calling, as seems to be a daily occurrence these days, and of course playing with the cat is much more fun than washing sticky dishes. 😐😀

I let her play. It gets her outside, away from a screen, yada yada yada so instead of chastising, I snapped pictures. Because this is what I do and also this is what I need to do to supplement my *Slice of Life in Toronto* blog. Ha.

So while the girl was getting some fresh air, I tackled some of the dishes, and checked on my various yeast-producing jars. I also watched my own loaf of bread rise.

I’m not usually a fan of white bread but this is the flour we have in house right now (all purpose unbleached) so that’s what we’re baking. I still had store-bought yeast as well, but my next baking adventure will be experimenting with the self-grown yeast jars. I’ll blog about that another time.

Eventually, the girl came back inside and and checked on her dough. It was time to divide it, and divide it again, and make tiny little balls.

While she did that (after scrubbing hands with soap and water for 20 seconds under mom’s watchful eye), I melted unsalted butter (half of what was required in the recipe) and mixed some brown sugar (we have only one package) with some white sugar (we have plenty of that) with a bit of cinnamon. The girl started dipping the balls of dough, first in butter, then in the sugar/cinnamom mixture.

They went into the bundt cake form like so:

Unbaked Monkey Bread in the making…

There was a second rising required, so we covered the dough balls and left them to it. At that point, I forced coerced bribed begged insisted the child help me clean up the sticky, cluttery mess.

She did. Sometimes I think the drama is all part of the self-entertainment around here…(them, more than me. Mostly them. Sometimes, me, too. Whatever. Boo.) 😉

Finally we were able to bake the Monkey Bread. When it came out of the oven, it looked like this:

Warm, pull-apart, sweet, sugary balls of baked dough. Monkey Bread.

So how does it taste?

Well, we omitted the caramel sauce to drizzle over, because we found it to be sweet enough. The taste reminds a little of cinnamon buns. Our general practice is to use about 20% less sugar in whichever recipe we’re following, and it never made an iota of difference in taste. In fact, we find that if a product has an overwhelming taste of pure sugar, it actually doesn’t taste as good as something that allows other ingredients to shine through.

The bit of sugar she rolled the balls in was just enough, and didn’t require additional sweet sauce.

Final note: after dinner, I saw that girl of mine heap some Monkey Bread balls onto a plate and sneak off to her craft corner. I asked her how many she took and she said a few.

I went over and saw at least 6.

So I took half away from her, sent her downstairs to get something, and took that opportunity of her absence to hide the rest of them.

Because.

If I hadn’t done that, there would be none left today, and she would have gone into diabetic shock.

Yes, I am known as MeanMom™ around here. So sue me. 😊

 

24 thoughts on “The Monkey Bread saga – part 2”

  1. I know I’m way behind, and no one else has asked – but could I have the recipe? It looks delicious! You could email it if you don’t want to post here, or send me a link …or should I just look it up myself? I have honestly never heard of it!

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. I am also known as *ThatMom* but we’ll overlook that for now. 😉

      No. I did not eat them. Quite frankly I’m over-carb’d and feeling sluggish as a result. I must venture out to do a produce supply run today…

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      1. “ThatMom” Suits you. 😳 Run with it.

        Our fat asses need to begin carb-moderating, if not flat out depleting. For 20 minutes at least.

        Fortinos was a shitshow. Aisles taped off like a crime scene. Necessary though. Again, suburban fuckery reared it’s ugly head there …

        Why do the Chooch’s – Donkeys in My Scrub of Paradise – think social distancing is optional?

        Life Living Amongst Assholes …

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I’m sorry. Maybe my antidote will come today after I experience my mom-and-pop shops outing for produce. Can’t be worse than a mass retailer…Last I heard a week ago the veg shops are still peddling fresh stuff…

        I don’t know what the answer is except maybe don’t live in Suburbia anymore? 😉

        Liked by 1 person

  6. We…and by we, I mean Tara, because she’s usually the one baking in our house…nearly always uses less sugar than a recipe calls for, and you’re right: you can never taste the difference.

    I’d kill for a monkey bread ball right about now.

    Liked by 1 person

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  10. Huh. Nice picture of your daughter, but I notice that your grass is way too green to have been buried in ice and snow for the last 7 months. Do you have super grass that can recover at quantum speed?

    Liked by 1 person

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