the monkey bread saga

I felt this post deserved a picture.

There sits the monkey bread. Last week. 12:45 AM. Tired and hungry, we started eating it before it was even cool enough to touch.

To start at the beginning, as promised in my last post, the idea to bake monkey bread struck me back in November while I was happily perusing through a Williams-Sonoma catalog. First, I found it amusing that it was called monkey bread. People have a strange fascination with all things surrounding monkeys, and I am no different. It seemed simple enough to make, provided you had a Williams-Sonoma monkey bread bundt pan and the Williams-Sonoma monkey bread mix.

So, in my infinite wisdom, I thought perhaps I could make the monkey bread for Thanksgiving. I ordered both items online two weeks in advance and proceeded to patiently wait. . . until it dawned on me that the items might not arrive in time for Thanksgiving. Panicked, I called customer service, and they assured me I would receive the shipments - at some point surrounding Thanksgiving day. Ugh.

I actually can't remember if both pan and mix made it to me before Thanksgiving, but either way, I decided that I didn't have enough time on Thanksgiving to get the extra ingredients and make it before heading out to see our aunts, uncles, and cousins. I'd make it at Christmas.

So Chrismas rolled around, and it got busier and busier, especially with food preparations. Since I like arranging cheese far more than I enjoy cooking meals, I was in charge of the hors d'oeuvres. In addition, I thought, I'm sure I would have enough time for the monkey bread. As Christmas Eve got closer and closer, I kept looking at the recipe instructions and thinking, this requires a lot of time - I won't have enough time on Christmas Eve, and I won't have enough time Christmas day because I'll be far too busy with Guitar Hero II (and I was).

Finally, it was decided, by me, that the monkey bread would wait. My little sister was none too pleased, but nonetheless, I had cheese, hummus, and crackers to concentrate on - far easier, and at the time, more important.

Then New Year's Eve was around the corner, and I thought about monkey bread, and then I thought some more, and then New Year's Eve skipped on by, and I had placed the monkey bread pan in my closet so as not to clutter my room (the kitchen was out of the question because I knew if I did that, then when I did finally go to make monkey bread, I would find that the pan had been taken to the garage to sit with any other excess baking items).

My Dad's birthday came at the end of January, and I thought about making the monkey bread for him, but when my mom mentioned he wanted crumb cake, I thought that was a safer, already-proven yummy bet. I'll admit, I was quick to dismiss the monkey bread idea.

This all brings us to the month of February, when my little sister's winter break arrived. We have to make the monkey bread, she said. I have to write a lot of poems for class, and I want to write one about monkey bread. Fair enough, little one, I replied.

The date was set for Wednesday, which would now be last Wednesday. We enlisted the help of everyone's favorite, soon-to-be-married cousin, who would be at our house at 8, and it was settled. At 6:00 PM, we went to buy ingredients, came home, laid everything out, and began.

We had already searched for our electric mixer - in the garage, of course - but it was not to be found, so after placing all the ingredients in a bowl, mixing it a little, we got ready to knead the dough.

Never knead ridiculously sticky dough without first greasing your hands. . . is one bit of information I would've added to the instructions. When our cousin arrived at 8, we were all in a fine mess of sticky dough. Half of it was stuck to our hands, some of it was on a shifty piece of wax paper, and a small portion of it was actually back in the bowl we had designated as the where-we-put-the-dough-back-into bowl. With dough stuck to his hands, I could tell my dad wasn't crazy about the bread so far, and my mom was already asking me if I could use the monkey bread bundt pan for anything else. . . you know, er - in case this doesn't work.

At 8:30 began the first of like a million "now put it in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours" steps in the recipe. It didn't look promising. When I checked up on it 1 hour later, it didn't look like it had moved an inch.

The story continues, but the jist of it is that the bread had to do a lot of rising sessions, and each time we doubted it would happen. Fortunately, we did grease our hands (there were a lot of "regrease!!" commands shouted) before we made each individual dough ball - amounting to a grand total of 48 - and dunked each one into butter and then sugar and then the bundt pan.

By the time we put the bread in the oven, we had already come to the realization that there was no way I could have pulled it off on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve, or my dad's birthday. We also understood why people always rave about how much their kids love making monkey bread - because they get to play with dough for a whole day. . . literally.

When we finally pulled it out of the oven, we were impressed at just how much it looked like the picture on the box. We also knew that a photo session to capture the moment in time was needed.

Like I said, we started eating it when it was still very, very hot.

My sister's astute conclusion: We made a giant Cinnabon in a $36 bundt pan.

A monkey Cinnabon, of course.

So there's the story, for all of you who asked =P