I made these on the first morning of spring break for the boys. Three out of four LOVED them and immediately asked me to make them again. They’re slightly more time consuming than making regular muffins, but if you’re in the mood for a sweet treat, these are worth the extra effort.

Most monkey bread recipes out there use refrigerated biscuit dough, which contains all kinds of lovely ingredients like partially hydrogenated soybean oil (gotta love those trans fats), xanthan gum and artificial flavors (which are typically a bunch of junky chemicals added to your food – I try not to buy products that have “natural or artificial flavors” at the bottom of their ingredient list.) I wouldn’t exactly call this biscuit dough healthy, but it doesn’t contain any trans fats or chemicals, that’s for sure.

I found this recipe on the Cooking Classy Blog. The author of the site and I have very similar tastes in sweets. I find almost all of her recipes very appealing. You should check her blog out.

Monkey Bread Muffins
Recipe found on the Cooking Classy Blog

2 cups + 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup milk
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a muffin tin, set aside. In a large mixing bowl whisk together flour, 3 Tbsp granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour buttermilk, 1/3 cup milk and melted butter into flour mixture. Stir with a fork or clean hands just until mixture comes together (don’t overmix.)

Pour 1/2 cup granulated sugar into a medium container that has a lid to cover – I used a tupperware container. Scoop out the dough a teaspoon at a time (I used a teaspoon measuring spoon to do this.) Drop the balls of dough into the container filled with sugar. Once you have a single layer of balls, cover the container and shake the container to completely coat the dough balls with sugar. Continue until all of the dough is coated. Drop the balls into the muffin cups. I ended up with 4 balls in each cup and a little bit of dough left over, which I divided equally among the 12 muffin cups.

Whisk together 6 Tbsp melted butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until well combined. Pour about a tablespoon of the brown sugar mixture evenly over each muffin. Place muffin tin on a cookie sheet (sometimes the sugar mixture spills over) and bake 18-19 minutes until golden. Allow to cool 5 minutes in muffin tin before removing muffins (I lifted mine out with a fork). Be sure not to wait too long to remove the muffins or the sugar will begin to harden and the muffins will stick to the pan making it difficult to remove them.

Yield: 12 muffins

One year ago: Baja-Style Fish Hand Pies
Two years ago: Chicken, Ham and Swiss Roulades
Three years ago: Frozen Chocolate-Covered Bananas
Four years ago: Sweet Corn Muffins