Easy Monkey Bread

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Sometimes you have to ease up a bit and go with the classic way a recipe is made. It really needs to have a good payoff, though, to be worth the shameful cheats.

True story: we are back to dreams of developing our own strawberry cake recipe after following to a T a famous Southern lady's recipe for it last week. Even gave in to using a box of vegetarian strawberry jell-o (!) and a bag of frozen strawberries (!) and, yes, a box of white cake mix (!!!) in the hopes of nailing strawberry cake for the first time. Well, it tasted kind of all right, but it ended up with a strangely moist texture and eerie brown color. Why is strawberry cake so hard to make from scratch and just as disappointing made from boxes? Someone, please let us know.

This monkey bread is different. It will take you about 5 minutes to make for brunch this weekend if you can get over your weird Southern pride about your own finely honed biscuit recipe and just go ahead and get some buttermilk biscuits in a can -- we like Immaculate Baking Company's work in this area.

What a fun recipe to try since we have been meaning to make monkey bread forever, monkey bread like Mama Diane made a lot back in the day, the kind of monkey bread you pick at with abandon as soon as it's out of the oven. You should try your hand at it, too -- we cut way down on the amount of sugar and butter used in other recipes, it couldn't be easier to make, and it's a ton of fun to share.

Easy Monkey Bread

1 can buttermilk biscuits
1/3 cup cane sugar (like Whole Foods 365 brand)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup unsalted butter (melted; like Whole Foods 365 brand)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut each unbaked biscuit into 6 pieces. Loosely roll the pieces into balls. Set aside. Mix cinnamon, salt and sugar in a bowl. Toss into biscuit pieces a few at a time and toss to coat. Add in the walnuts and raisins. With a silicone brush, brush a bunt pan with a little bit of the butter to coat. Add in biscuit mixture and pour any of the mixture's sugar, raisins, and nuts that are left in the bowl on top. Pour remainder of butter over bread. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Invert bread onto a plate and serve.