Coconut Banana Monkey bread

Little Man got his Bear at our pack meeting last week. It took us a while to finally get the award but now we're onward and upward with Webelos. October was a Jungle theme, so it was only fitting to make some monkey bread for the pack meeting refreshments. This is my own personal recipe. It includes coconut and bananas with the gooey break apart bread in a Carmel like vanilla sauce. I think it was really crazy wicked decent. Some of the Cub Scouts where a little disappointed that I didn't use real monkey in the bread. What the heck is the matter with me? What was I thinking not boiling up some cute little chimpanzee to make the bread?

Dough,

You will need:

2T active dry yeast

3/4 cup warm water (110 degrees)

1/4 cup melted butter

1/2 cup coconut milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/4 cup sugar

2 tsp coconut extract

1 tsp rum extract

2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3 cups bread flour

Sauce:

1 cup brown sugar

2 T cinnamon

3/4 cup melted butter

1 small package "cook and serve" vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix

1 tsp double strength vanilla

Fruit:

1 banana, chopped

1/2 cup macadamia nuts

1 cup coconut flakes

1/2 cup dried pineapple or mango

For the dough, in a large mixing bowl dissolve the yeast in warm water with the 1/4 cup sugar. Add coconut milk, eggs, melted butter, extracts, whole wheat flour and salt. Mix about 3 minutes. Add remaining flour 1 cup at a time until supple dough forms. You may need less than the recipe calls for depending on the storage conditions of your flour. Add until dough pulls away from the side of the bowl and forms a ball. Knead with the dough hook in mixer 5 minutes medium speed. Remove dough from mixer and form into a ball. Place ball in a large, lightly greased bowl and cover. Allow to raise until double, about 1 hour and 30 minutes. While dough rises, make the Carmel vanilla sauce.

Once the dough doubles in size, punch down. Remove from bowl. Totally random sized balls of dough need to be formed. This is a great one to make with kids.

To make the sauce:

Melt the butter in a microwave safe dish. Add all the remaining ingredients and stir well.

Don't you just want to drink this stuff?

Now I poured half of the sauce in a large 14 inch skillet with deep sides. It just makes a good surface area for coating the dough chunks. Roll the chunks around in the sauce.

I also added the banana, nuts, dried fruit and coconut...

In various layers...

Just in case it didn't seem evil enough, go ahead and coat the top chunks with sauce, so everyone gets good and gooey. Like mud wrestling...but with dough that you eat.

Dough wrestling hurts my brain.

I love coconut. I do...so I coated the top with more coconut.

Now here's where I get weird. Tee hee. I know I've said it before, but really I'm a bit crazy. I take the entire contents of the skillet and dump it into a well oil large stoneware casserole dish. I've had mine 10 years. It's been since discontinued by the Pampered Chef so I can't even tell anyone where to get one. Just use a large casserole pan (at least 12 inches by 18 inches) Or 3- 9inch by 5 inch loaf pans, buttered well so the stuff doesn't stick. Allow dough to raise 45 minutes to an hour. Key here is to allow the dough to get really, really, really fluffy. Bake in preheated oven 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes (check internal temperature with a meat thermometer...170 degrees and it is cooked through).

Now, make sure you have a foil lined pan or serving tray that will fit over the entire pan. This time I happened to use a nice cookie sheet covered with foil. Choose your audience. Mine happened to be going to a Cub Scout function with zany boys. They don't care one way or another if the monkey bread is on a fancy tray. If you make this for Great Aunt Bertha's funeral dinner...maybe need a nice tray. Just be sure it can take the heat of a warm wad of Carmel and dough and that it has a 1 inch lip to help catch the extra Carmel sauce. Put the tray serving side down, facing the bread and firmly grip the pan and tray. Turn the bread over quickly so it doesn't drip all over.

The only down side of making monkey bread is cleaning up the pan. I did refrain from just putting my sweet little red head right into that pan and licking the carmel-eeee goodness off with my tongue. Be ever so impressed. Did I mention we have a dog named Karmel? Hmmm. Okay. I'm random. All that aside, let's not lose track of the fact that monkey bread is really one of life's finer treats.

No monkeys where harmed in the making of this post.

There you go.