Monday, April 6, 2009
Foods / Recipe File Throwdown Monkey Bread: How Panera Is Like My Grandmother
Posted by Carrington Fox on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 6:46 AM
With 650 calories, 13 grams of fat and more sugar than I like to ingest in a day, the Cobblestone at Panera is exactly the kind of food I'd like never to see again. And yet, I find myself rerouting my trip to work so I can pass by the mega-bakery just to pick one up.
The Cobblestone isn't actually a muffin, though it's shaped like one. It's a muffin in sweet-roll clothing. Think of sweet bolls of cotton stuck together with a cinnamon-spice glaze then baked until the top scabs up like over-baked apple pie filling. Try to pick a raisin or apple chunk from the crisp, sugary muffin top, and a bite-size hunk of sweet dough pops cleanly out--a delicious fission of a doughy, sticky atom.
While I usually avoid fruit-raisin things in favor of the chocolate-coconut flavor axis, there's something about the Cobblestone that transcends my normal appetite. I finally figured out what it is: It reminds me of my grandmother's Monkey Bread.
If memory serves, Meme used to cut up disks of ready-to-bake biscuits--the kind that POP! open when you push the side of the canister with a spoon--and reassemble them into a wreath of biscuit hunks. Then she'd glaze the whole thing with a syrup of sugar, cinnamon and maybe raisins or fruit zest, and bake.
Rule No. 1 of Monkey Bread is you never cut Monkey Bread with a knife. You pull it apart, hunk by hunk, which means there is no such thing as a finite slice. You just work your way around the doughy ring, until eventually you get a clean break that leaves the cake looking tidy. This, of course, never happens, so you ultimately eat the whole thing, which is surely at least 650 calories. Regardless, it's the kind of food that's fun to make and perfect for putting in the center of the table for a long, lazy breakfast.
I don't remember the specific formula for Monkey Bread, and sadly, my grandmother isn't around to ask any more. Does anyone have a recipe they could share?
Comments (16)
Showing 1-16 of 16
Paula Deen has a version of a monkey bread recipe that's called gorilla bread, why I'm not sure (super-sized monkey bread?) but it's dang tasty:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/gorilla-bread-recipe/index.html
like
dislike
I remember 'helping' bake this as a child. I think the beauty is that there is no real recipe. Just cut up chunks of biscuit dough, toss in cinnamon sugar and layer with dots of butter. Add raisins or apples or nothing. Bake. Eat. Sigh.
Hippo, you make it sound easy. So easy that you could just whip one up for the Bites crew!
There are only about a billion monkey bread recipes on the web. In addition to the Paula Deen gilding-the-lily version, you can find a billion and a half that use canned biscuits, and another half billion that use yeast dough. You might want to try this new invention called "Google." There are maple versions, savory versions, all manner of variations, including a couple of lighter versions on the Cooking Light web site.
I'm curious ... did it not occur to you to go to myrecipes.com or foodtv.com or allrecipes.com and do a search? Or Google? Or did you just need a blog topic that would invite commentary?
I have an awesome computer with a fast connection, so I could pretty much forego all conversation and interaction with the outside world. Welcome to my blog called pleasebequietwhileisurf.com.
wow, and people think my comments are sometimes mean? i'm a cream puff compared to so many... because that was downright fucked up.
i think jamiealex needs to get seriously laid.
I stand by the comment. Monkey bread, and its relationship to the Panera item, is a perfectly reasonable topic for a blog posting. I suppose I've just been irritated at the way this blog throws out un-researched "facts" sometimes and engages in other sloppy writing practices. Yes, I know it's a blog, not something that goes to print. Still, asking for a Monkey Bread recipe as if it were a mysterious lost concoction from the dim recesses of the past seemed a bit desperate and uninformed.
And I get laid plenty, thank you.
jamiealex - ok - really, that is a fair response and i apologize for being childish. it wasn't mean - it was pointed and even.
i kneejerked towards protecting the amazing carrington. again, i'm sorry.
because this is actually a pet peeve of mine too. i was just talking about it yesterday. i understand it is a way to invite conversation but we don't want to dumb it down too much...
that being said. maybe someone out there really does have a special secret recipe that's been handed down? i mean you never know...
elZ? down boy... jamiealex made a valid observation in a fair way without being a jerk. at least i think so.
i don't even think his/her manners were off. it was i who was out of line.
this person has a point.
duly noted.
In response to the monkey bread post, my mom dug out my grandmother's recipe. Too bad I won't be sharing it with you. Y'all can go Google yourselves some Paula Deen love.
Still, asking for a Monkey Bread recipe as if it were a mysterious lost concoction from the dim recesses of the past seemed a bit desperate and uninformed.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that it was a social icebreaker not meant to be the last word on the subject—the start of a conversation, not the end. You're right that we were inviting comments. On the other hand, if Carrington had made a pitch for responses to her post about F. Scott's hamburgers—for which she got chef Will Uhlhorn to explain his preparation—maybe she'd have 14 comments instead of exactly one. Ask and ye shall receive?
