Monkey Balls See, Monkey Ball Do

Last Saturday was GoatSpawn's first snow day, and we were stuck inside the house, surrounded by a foot of snow. It was time for some warm, baking goodness, but our oven stopped working sometime around Thanksgiving, so warm baking goodness would have to come from the bread machine.

I was checking out the King Arthur Flour website for bread machine recipes, when Foodgoat spotted this photo for the Sweet Pull-Apart Bread, and said "We have to make that":
So, inspired by the photo, we embarked on making the sweet pull-apart bread, also known as monkey bread.

First, you use the dough only setting on the machine to make the sweet dough.

Dough
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

All ingredients go into the machine in the order your machine described. Check the consistency after 10 minutes of kneading to make sure it's smooth and soft and adjust as needed (which you should do anytime you make anything in the bread machine).

Next, put the dough onto a flour covered surface and cut it into 32 pieces.

Next, the yummy topping ...

Topping
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2/3 cup light brown sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

Dip each dough ball into the butter, then roll in the cinnamon sugar mix.

Layer the balls back into the bread machine. Allow them to rise for about an hour, then bake in the bread machine for 65 minutes with the light crust. (I accidentally used the medium crust, and it turned out a bit too dry on the crust.)

Voila! Monkey bread! What you end up with very much like cinnamon rolls - pieces of warm, sweet, a little sticky bread that you just pull off the loaf. It was YUMMY.

Not only that, but we could also talk about monkey balls for days.