Monkey

Hello, Eleanor here, wishing you all a wonderful New Year,

and hoping you all manage to climb your own personal mountains in 2011.

I was looking for silicone loaf *tins* in TKMaxx, and although there were none, I did spot something I've wanted for a long time, a ring mould. Or maybe it's a bundt pan, or just a cake ring. Anyway, it's non-stick and quite large, so it needed a rather lovely first outing. Following the success of my first ever iced cinnamon whirls last year, I decided to make Monkey Bread, a soft, tear and share type of bread, with a cinnamonny flavour and a gooey, sticky caramelly sauciness.

I found the recipe on the Pink Whisk, by Ruth, a girl many of us met last year, while sitting in front of our televisions glued to the Great British Bake Off 2010, in which she reached the finals, and reached our teatime treat loving tums (and bums).

She shares a feast of edible goodies on her blog, to keep me going for a month of Sunday teas. Thank you Ruth. :)

While Ruth has fab followable step by step photos, it's always fun to take your own, so that was my plan, and where I hit my first hurdle.

I started off with a dead camera battery, so whilst that was charging, I got on and made the dough, in the bread maker of course, although Ruth makes it perfectly simple by hand, because she is dedicated (and having confessed to not 'doing' bread, proceeds to 'do' it with her usual flair) .

It took:

500g Strong White Flour
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp Salt
55g Butter
2 Eggs beaten
2 tbsp Honey
2 sachets instant dried yeast
175ml Milk

My bread machine likes the yeast in first, then the rest of the dry ingredients, finally the liquid, so in went the yeast, then the flour, the cinnamon and the salt, followed by the butter, the eggs, the honey and the milk.

I set the machine to make dough, on the pizza dough setting, which takes 45 minutes. When the beeper went, I tipped out the dough  into a greased bowl, clingfilmed it and put it by the boiler to prove.

After an hour, it had doubled in size, so I tipped it out and formed what Ruth calls a long fat sausage. Mine was more of a short obese sausage. After cutting a few half inch slices, I remembered I was supposed to be photographing the process, so at this point I unplugged the camera and this is where I was at:

I continued to slice, (with a knife, although a spoon has now sneaked in there)

and then chop each slice into rough pieces, tossing them a few at a time, into another bowl,

containing 150g of caster sugar mixed with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon,

shaking them around, like this:

Drop the chunks into the ring pan (which I didn't grease or flour)

Put aside to prove again, until it looks like this:

and lets have another look at that:

Tell me I'm not the only person who bakes with granola, pickled red cabbage, and a robin ornament taking up valuable workspace behind?

Now make a sauce of 200g butter and 100g of dark brown sugar:

which after a minute on high in the microwave, becomes this (and the pickled red cabbage has now been joined by 2 jars of pickled onions)

Pour the 'sauce to be' over the proven chunks and pop the ring pan into the oven

at 200C/180C fan 375F/Gas Mark 5.

Now, if you do as Ruth suggests and cover with foil after 15 - 20 mins, yours won't look quite as well done as mine, but hey ho, you can learn from my mistakes. Total 35 - 40 minutes cooking time.

Turn out

and who cares if the top caught a little, cos it's now the bottom, and that sauce takes your mind off everything. Toffeeish, on the outside and into the crevices, with the soft (oh so soft) lighter than air cinnamon bread cushions, it's like fudgy heavenly clouds.

See you later in the month with SImple Things - did you know the word is BELIEF this month?

Byeee

 

 

Comments

[alexa]

This looks just heavenly - I love baking bread, and it's such an unusually idea to dust and cut and drop the pieces in. Glorious!

[claireliz]

ooooh that looks delish, I am drooling here, seriously yum. LOL at your pickled onions & cabbage, really made me laugh
C
xx

[Suzanne]

Oh that DOES look very yummy!

[Scrapdolly]

Oh my I don't bake but this I have to try

[Lynne V]

Looks and sounds absolutely delicious.
I need to try this.
I have an assortment of jars and bits at the back of my work surface too:)

[Joy]

That looks scrumdiddlyumptious. I may make this today. I will have to hide it or it will be gone in minutes!

[Ruth]

Looks lovely Eleanor - and I'm always forgetting the foil too! xx

[jayne]

Never seen this before....looks yummy.
Great pictures to explain how to do this...tfs xx